Culturally Rich

Tiny Serra Chapel is powerful evidence of the cultural foundations of Orange County. The adobe and wood-beamed church at Mission San Juan Capistrano, where Father Junipero Serra first said Mass in 1778, is one of the oldest buildings in California.

Its walls are covered with a hybrid of artistic designs; wispy Native American swirls in red and yellow framed by somber portraits of the saints depicted in regal Spanish passion. At the front of the sanctuary, a golden altar imported from Barcelona glitters in rich Catholic splendor. And the sagging rafters seem to literally drip with the enigmatic symbols of the Juaneno Indians, whose land was being claimed by the Spanish.

The images vividly illustrate the meeting of cultures, which, joined by many others in the years since, have created the tapestry of life in Orange County as we know it today.

Along the way, other cultures and peoples shaped the county: the Mexicans who once owned this land and later became its immigrants; German colonists who founded the city of Anaheim; Basque shepherds who tended their flocks in the future La Habra; restless American Midwesterners attracted by cheap land and jobs; Chinese workers who helped pick the early citrus; and Southeast Asian refugees who arrived by the tens of thousands after the Vietnam War.

It is a pattern that continues to unfold. The county’s population of Korean Americans doubled to 80,000 after the Los Angeles riots of 1992. And the population of Middle Easterners, attracted by economic opportunities in a Mediterranean climate, has grown recently to nearly 60,000, creating, among other things, an Anaheim neighborhood called Little Gaza.

“Orange County was literally built on migrations and immigrations,” says Lawrence B. de Graff, a history professor at Cal State Fullerton.

The first and most profound of these was the influx of Spanish explorers and padres intent on mapping the New World and converting its inhabitants to Catholicism in buildings like the Serra Chapel. From 1769, when an expedition led by Gaspar de Portola first passed through the area, until well into the 1800s, thousands of them came to these shores, exploring the landscape and baptizing the Indians. The hacienda culture they created survived many changes.

In 1821 Mexico won its independence from Spain, replacing the priests with governors. And in 1848, after a war between the two countries, the United States bought California from Mexico.

Meanwhile, former Spanish soldiers and explorers had been creating the ranchos that formed the matrix of early Orange County society.

In 1801 Juan Pablo Grijalva petitioned the Spanish government for a 63,500-acre land grant in the area that now includes Santa Ana, Orange, Costa Mesa and Tustin. The ruins of Grijalva’s adobe home can still be seen on Hoyt Hill in Orange.

Nine years later, Antonio Yorba and Juan Peralta established another major rancho--Santiago de Santa Ana on 65,212 acres of pristine land.

With one small exception, the population of what would become Orange County was to remain largely Mexican and Indian for the next several decades. The exception: a handful of German Gold Rush refugees who migrated south from San Francisco in 1857 to grow grapes on the banks of the Santa Ana River. Their creation was the city of Anaheim, which means “Ana’s home” in German.

The rancho-dominated culture began to change, however, in 1876 with the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad linking the East Coast to the West. A rate war with the competing Santa Fe Railroad in 1887 brought the fare from Chicago to Los Angeles down to $1. And, lured by the promise of good weather and good fortune, tens of thousands of people from the Midwest began streaming into Southern California.

“The railroad rate war brought people into this barren land,” De Graff says, “and Orange County quickly became a county of Anglo Americans who had recently arrived from other parts of the country. What had begun as an Anglo American minority very quickly became a majority and, by 1890, a very large majority.”

Still, there were at least three other immigrant streams that helped shape Orange County beginning around the turn of the last century.

Chinese workers coming from Asia and Northern California helped Anglo farmers harvest their citrus groves. Japanese immigrants, until they were restricted in 1924, went into citrus farming too--but were more likely to work their own land.

And an early stream of Mexican immigrants started a wave that, with some major interruptions, has continued until today. Hailing from the small towns and villages of Mexico, they saw Orange County--which separated from Los Angeles in 1889--as a golden land of opportunity, especially in the bean and citrus fields that then constituted one of the county’s major economic enterprises.

After World War I, a new kind of worker, attracted by the discovery of oil in Huntington Beach, Placentia and other areas, began arriving countywide. But it was World War II--during which Orange County became host to several military bases--that set the stage for a major growth spurt almost unmatched in American history.

It began after the war with the return of thousands of GIs who had liked the area and decided to make it their home. In the 1950s, the completion of the Santa Ana Freeway, the decline in profitability of the citrus groves, the rise of the defense industry and the opening of Disneyland all combined to make the erstwhile sleepy agricultural county a major destination.

Thus began the county’s second great migration from elsewhere in the United States. Lured again by the promise of good weather, good jobs, accessible housing and low crime rates, emigres fled in droves from the tensions in the nation’s cities and the lack of opportunity in its small towns to the suburban quietude of sunny Orange County.

Some were retirees, looking for a new place to settle. Others were young families attracted by good schools. Together they created a growth surge rarely seen anywhere. In 1950 the population of Anaheim stood at about 10,000; 10 years later, it was no less than 100,000.

Among those who moved to Orange County in the 1950s was Robert H. Schuller, a young Protestant minister who left his native Iowa to start a church in Garden Grove. After a modest beginning preaching at a drive-in theater, Schuller founded Crystal Cathedral and its nationally televised “Hour of Power,” both of which helped establish Orange County as an area conducive to innovations in religious worship.

Other groups began settling in Orange County as well--including African Americans from central Los Angeles, Jews from north of the county line and a once-prominent Dutch community that began emigrating after World War II and founded, among other things, the social Dutch Club Avio in Anaheim.

Among those fighting for equal opportunity in the land of opportunity were Felicitas Mendez and her husband, Gonzalo, who, along with others, successfully sued the school districts in Santa Ana, Westminster and other cities to end the segregation of Latino students in Orange County.

Other battles emerged as established and immigrant cultures found themselves side-by-side--battles over bilingual education, the treatment of illegal immigrants and access to political office.

In 1965 Congress did something that was to profoundly affect the county’s future: Changing immigration laws to wipe out ethnic discrimination, it essentially opened up the country’s borders to nations that previously had been severely restricted.

The largest groups to take advantage of the new laws came from Asian countries. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees arrived, many of whom landed at El Toro, were moved temporarily to Camp Pendleton, and then made the county their home. Today Westminster’s Little Saigon is a cultural center for 170,000 people of Vietnamese descent, the nation’s largest concentration.

In the end, the story of Orange County’s century can be seen in the numbers: in less than 50 years an agrarian county of about 200,000--nearly all Caucasian--grew into an urban center hosting a population of more than 2.6 million. The ethnic mix today is 59% white, 27% Latino, 12% Asian and about 2% black.

As the new millennium unfolds, the trend toward ethnic diversity is likely to continue.

By 2020, demographers predict, whites will be a minority, comprising about 41% of the population, with Latinos comprising another 41%. And by 2040, they say, the county’s population will have increased to about 4 million--27% of it white, 23% Asian and 48% Latino.

After many waves of immigration, a land that more than a century ago was dominated by Spanish-speaking settlers, will have Latinos as its largest ethnic group.

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PEOPLE AND INNOVATIONS

Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest born in Majorca, Spain, immigrated to Mexico in 1758, attaining a devoted following because of his intellectual achievements and oratorical skill. Serra founded nine missions along the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco, including Mission San Juan Capistrano, where modern Orange County began. A century later, when Pope John Paul II beatified the missionary padre, Native Americans objected on the grounds that he had been a colonialist.

For many of his 97 years, cowboy Reyes Serrano rode wild horses, rounded up cattle, hunted bobcats, chewed tobacco, smoked cigars and downed a shot of whiskey with breakfast every morning. Serrano--born on a Juaneno Indian reservation in 1901 and known to local historians as California’s “oldest vaquero”--was the great-grandson of Don Jose Serrano, who in 1846 received the original Mexican land grant of 10,000 acres that eventually became El Toro. Serrano’s great-great-grandfather, Don Francisco Serrano, served as chief executive officer of the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1799. The last Spanish cowboy was buried last year at El Toro Memorial Park in a simple service punctuated by the singing of an Indian song.

Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez went from being thorns in the side of the Santa Ana Unified School District to having one of its schools named in their honor. Immigrants from Mexico, they were part of a group that successfully sued Santa Ana, Westminster and other local school districts in 1945 on behalf of Latino students in the county. The lawsuit ultimately resulted in the outlawing of school segregation in Orange County nearly a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the issue.

Robert H. Schuller, who hailed from Iowa, began preaching the gospel from atop a snack bar at the Orange Drive-In Theater in 1955. Not satisfied with merely distinguishing the county as the birthplace of drive-in religion, however, Schuller went on to create Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, opened in 1980. The “Hour of Power” broadcast from the church is the most widely watched religious program in America. Schuller’s ministry put Orange County on the map as a place where charismatic religious movements can thrive.

The Jesus People movement of the 1960s started in a then-tiny Costa Mesa church called Calvary Chapel before spreading nationwide. Combining a mixture of flower power with gospel truth, the movement attracted disenfranchised hippies who came to church to hear the preaching of Chuck Smith in his trademark Hawaiian shirt. Smith, now 72, recently preached to a reunion of early followers at Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. Among the movement’s local graduates is Greg Laurie, founder of the annual Harvest Crusade, which attracted 100,000 celebrants last summer including 30,000 at Edison International Field of Anaheim.

At age 12, Yen Do started his career as an unpaid writing apprentice for an underground high school newspaper in Vietnam. Twenty-one years later--in 1978--he founded Nguoi Viet Daily, the first Vietnamese-language hard-news daily in America. Based in Westminster’s Little Saigon, the newspaper strives to adhere to the rules of Western-style objective reporting--an unusual approach in Vietnamese journalism. “Many people are not pleased with the editorial decision of the paper to stay neutral in debates,” Do has said. But, he adds, “to write news, to chronicle events, is to have power, and with power comes responsibility.”

In Westminster’s Little Saigon, more than 170,000 Vietnamese Americans comprise the largest community of its kind in America. They’ve been arriving in Orange County since 1975, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. But it was a Communist flag and a portrait of Ho Chi Minh that created a defining moment in their history as Americans: As many as 15,000 rallied in a show of unity earlier this year that spread well beyond Orange County.

Leisure World, Orange County’s own experiment in senior living, was founded in the early 1960s, first in Seal Beach and later in Laguna Hills. These planned communities established age requirements (55 and older) and tailored services to their residents. This year, the Laguna Hills community voted itself Orange County’s 32nd city and became Laguna Woods. Average age of its 18,000 residents: 77

TIMELINE

16th and 17th centuries--Native Americans dominate the area that will eventually become Orange County.

1769--An expedition of soldiers and priests led by Gaspar de Portola becomes the first group of Europeans to reach Orange County.

1776--Mission San Juan Capistrano founded by Father Junipero Serra.

1840-45--Mexican government bans immigration to California.

1857--A group of German colonists founds Anaheim as a vintner colony.

1860--Domingo Bastanchury, a shepherd from the Basque region of Europe, begins raising sheep in what will eventually become La Habra.

1875 to 1880--Hispanic, Chinese and Japanese workers begin immigrating to Orange County, supplying much-needed labor in agriculture.

1887--A rate war between the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads drives the fare from Chicago to Los Angeles down to $1, sparking a land boom and an influx of American Midwesterners.

1942--Orange County’s 1,800 Japanese Americans are evacuated to Poston, Ariz., in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Only 600 will choose to return after their release.

1943--El Toro Marine base opens on 4,000 acres of Irvine Ranch, setting the stage for an influx of military personnel into the county, many of whom will eventually make it their home.

1945--In response to a petition filed by people of Mexican descent against school officials in Westminster, Garden Grove, El Modena and Santa Ana, school segregation is outlawed in Orange County.

1950--Various economic factors spark the beginning of a new wave of emigres from elsewhere in the United States.

1964--Leisure World opens in Seal Beach.

1966--Changes in federal immigration laws set the stage for expanded Asian immigration.

1975--The fall of Saigon sparks massive immigration of Vietnamese refugees after the federal government designates Camp Pendleton as a relocation center. Many of the newcomers settle in Westminster, Garden Grove and Huntington Beach.

1990--Middle Easterners begin settling in the county in larger numbers.

1992--Korean American population in Orange County grows after Los Angeles riots.

1999--Protests erupt in Little Saigon over the display of a Communist flag, marking the emergence of the Vietnamese community as a cohesive force.