ORANGE COUNTY ALMANAC : The First Tourists
The first Spanish explorers into what is now Orange County arrived in July, 1769, as they traveled north from Mexico.
The explorers, led by Don Gaspar de Portola, spent the night near what is now the city of Orange. An entry in the expedition’s journal predicted that the area “would be a site for building a city.”
Source: Journals of the Portola Expedition
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