Huntington Beach Co. a Maker of History, a Victor in Politics

Critics and supporters alike agree on one thing about the Huntington Beach Co.: It has been a pioneer and history-maker in Orange County.

Most notably, the company took a swamp-surrounded stretch of ocean beach in 1903 and converted that unlikely site into the booming community that has become the third largest city in Orange County.

A key to that transformation was the skilled use of politics. The city’s very name reflects what was essentially a bribe to electric-railroad czar Henry E. Huntington in 1903. Huntington was the head of the Pacific Electric Co., the firm that linked the Los Angeles basin through “red car” electric-powered rail vehicles.

William E. Foster, president of the Chevron branch that oversees the Huntington Beach Co., said in a recent interview that the land company formed in 1903 and immediately tried to persuade Huntington to extend the red car line into the tiny, isolated community that was at the time called “Pacific City.”

“The company offered Huntington a lot of stock and promised to change the name of the city to Huntington Beach,” Foster said. “We don’t know which impressed him most.”

It was the first major political victory for the Huntington Beach Co., as it turned out. Huntington agreed to the offer, and on July 4, 1904, the electric cars came rolling into the newly renamed community of Huntington Beach.

It was not until 1909--six years after the Huntington Beach Co. formed--that the city of Huntington Beach incorporated. Said Foster: “We jokingly like to remind the city that it was named for the Huntington Beach Co.--not the other way around.”