Orange County Then . . . and Now

The couple, above left, are crossing Forest Avenue, near the Perry Warren Drug Store, at what is now South Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, when the dirt road was becoming the center of the city’s modern business district. It was about 1920, and there had been big changes in Laguna. The power poles had brought electricity about four years earlier. The eucalyptus forest after which the street was named had almost disappeared. The only land access to town was the inconvenient journey down Laguna Canyon. Still, many made the trip in the summer to escape the heat inland. The 1920 census counted 363 year-round residents. The summer population was the reason the road in the foreground was called Riverside Drive. A land speculator bought oceanfront land to the south and hawked lots to families in Riverside for their summer retreats. Laguna would have only a few more years of idyllic isolation. A new road was about to be carved along the coast that would connect Laguna to other coastal towns. Even though Coast Highway had not yet been built, the city’s year-round population soared to 2,000 by 1925. A year after the coast road opened in 1926, the town incorporated. At right: Forest Avenue today.