Lucky to Wind Up in This Courthouse

Orange County boasts some nice architecture, but to me, our most beautiful building is the Old County Courthouse at the edge of Santa Ana’s civic center.

Its Arizona red sandstone veneer and granite base, its three-arch doorway, its carved images of justice link us to times past. How appropriate that it’s still a working county building, with the Orange County History Museum on its top floor open weekdays for us to enjoy.

Unfortunately, not enough seem to know about it to glean what it has to offer.

“We get some traffic from people who come in for marriage licenses downstairs, and some school groups,” said curator Marshall Duell. “But a lot of people don’t realize we’re here.”

I stood this week in the third floor’s old Department 2--now the museum’s home--where the notorious 1947 Beulah Louise Overell and Bud Gollum murder trial took place. They were the engaged couple accused of killing her wealthy parents aboard their yacht, the Mary E, in Newport Harbor, then dynamiting the boat. They were acquitted following a few prosecutorial snafus with the evidence.

I was at the museum to catch the tail end of the Irvine family history exhibit, which closed this week to make way for a new event. It’s a shame more people didn’t know about it. The blowups of old photos loaned by Irvine family members and the artifacts with them provided a nice slice of the county’s development.

This is not the kind of museum where you can show your children the county’s overall growth. There are no permanent museum pieces. But its ongoing traveling exhibits each explore a part of what we were. One, for example, depicted Chinese settlement in California. One coming soon will consist of photographs of the Old West. And opening April 4 will be an exhibit made up of ancient discoveries uncovered during development of the new 15-mile toll road in South County by the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency. Steve Conkling, who led much of the digging, says the exhibit should help promote an interest in paleontology.

“We came up with tens of thousands of fossils, yet most of this incredible stuff is just stored in a warehouse,” he said. “We want the public to see it, to understand what was going on here millions of years ago.”

Some of the fossils date back 63 million years. Included will be a life-size blowup of an 8 million-year-old baleen whale found in Laguna Hills. You can also watch a video on how it was removed from the construction site.

Some of the best gems come in small packages. One example is a possum tooth you’ll be able to see. The experts say that that single tooth is the most important find of the entire excavation--it was the catalyst that led paleontologists to conclude that part of the county was once covered by a wide delta as large as the Nile’s.

The exhibit will be on display through September. If you decide to go, allow yourself enough time to take a tour of the whole courthouse. You don’t have to reach back millions of years to be enriched by this county’s past.

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Key to the City: The gates will be open in Placentia today at one of the most spectacular driveways you’ll find around. The uphill climb to the old George Key ranch house begins with hedges of English roses and winds past peppers and pines and palms and orange trees. And at the foot of the 50-foot veranda of the two-story home is the most splendid oak tree you will ever see.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the building of the George Key home, on Bastanchury Road, just west of Placentia Avenue. Key was one of the citrus growers who founded Sunkist. The home is now run by the county, which will celebrate the anniversary there from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today with what it’s calling “Orange County Pioneer Day,” filled with music, food and crafts.

The theme for the day will be what was going on in America in the era when the house was built--mostly the Spanish-American War. A Rough Riders camp will be set up on the front lawn, and a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator will be on hand. There are war exhibits set up inside the home, including a rare picture of the baseball team from the Maine battleship, blown up in a Cuban harbor in a prelude to war.

If you go, don’t miss a look at the tool shed, where ranger reserve Spike O’Donnell will explain the hundreds of garage items, such as an old buckboard Key once bought and a gigantic bear trap. There’s also a motorized sleigh with two fake reindeer Key created to entertain his children.

It’s a beautiful home, but it’s the grounds that make this visit worth your time. Its two acres include 218 trees, more than half of them in a citrus grove.

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More “Big A” Kisses: The Wall Street Journal has brought up the “Kiss Your ‘Big A’ Goodbye” billboard controversy. It noted this week that the Edison Co. and Disney have turned off many baseball fans with the billboard campaign, aimed at reminding us that the Angels will be playing in a renovated stadium (once known as the Big A, now adopting the Edison corporate name).

The Wall Street Journal quotes an Edison spokesman as saying that “every once in a while, the creative people get out a little bit ahead of you.” Meaning: We goofed.

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Legal Aid for the Young: When student leaders at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton learned that a local elementary school was in desperate need of books, they took up the cause.

The results so far: 200 books for the Wallace R. Davis Elementary School in Santa Ana. Danielle Augustin, secretary of the law school’s Student Bar Assn., says its goal is another 800 books.

Davis Principal Lillian French says that not only is she delighted with the donation, the fact that it comes from students has special meaning to the Davis children: “It shows the positive side of staying with it, staying in school.”

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Wrap-Up: Quite a crowd is expected for the Key Ranch open house, and there’s only one place to park--across Bastanchury Road at Sierra Vista Elementary School. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for children. If you go, don’t let your youngsters overlook that oak tree.

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Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com