Reconstructing the Irvine Home From Bits, Pieces
To most people, a piece of broken glass in the dirt is nothing more than yesterday’s trash. To Nick Magalousis, it can be a tiny window into history.
There’s plenty of broken glass just below the surface where one of Orange County’s most powerful families once reigned over an agricultural empire that stretched from the mountains to the ocean.
At the corner of Jamboree Road and Irvine Boulevard, where the Irvine ranch house once stood, there are shards of pottery and ceramic tile, chips of paint and chunks of carved wood. There are rusty nails and bullet casings caked with mud, and bones from meals prepared when crops--not subdivisions--dominated Orange County.
“It’s mostly bits and pieces,” Magalousis said. “But, hopefully, they are bits and pieces that will allow us to tell a story.”
Since last summer, college students in Magalousis’ anthropology classes at Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College have been unearthing that story one trowel of dirt at a time.
Next year, the county will begin construction here on a $5-million public library that will be the centerpiece of the 16 1/2-acre Irvine Ranch Headquarters Historic Park. The 10,000-square-foot library will be a replica of the old mansion, which was torn down after being damaged by fire in 1965.
It is hoped that the archeological dig will uncover design details for the library’s architects, as well as items to be shown in an interpretive display about life on the ranch.
“It was one of the greatest farms in the world at the time,” said Marlene Brajdic, historic resources planner for Orange County. “A lot of the changes and innovations in agriculture that happened on this ranch were copied around the world.”
An avocado grove covers the ground where James Irvine built a modest home for his ranch manager in 1876. By the time it became the family residence in 1906, the building had been expanded to 30 rooms.
Old photos and the Global Positioning Satellite system enabled Magalousis to locate the mansion’s foundation. Then, high-tech yielded to low-tech as the students carefully began digging six pits, each 1-meter square--the front door, a fireplace, a stairwell--at locations that promised the best results.
His students are looking for clues that will illuminate subtle facts. Hidden in the these holes, Magalousis said, is evidence of the socioeconomic differences and cultural diversity of the people who lived on the ranch. Students augment what they find by interviewing former workers.
“Archeology is slow. It takes time,” said Magalousis, 55, who has worked on digs from Southern California to Syria.
“People have grown up with Harrison Ford, and . . . what’s that movie he had?” He stopped to think, and then recalled that it’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Very entertaining. But it’s not science. This is science. It’s hard work and demanding.”
Kat White was ready for it.
“It’s just kind of cool to touch old stuff,” said White, 40, a former student of Magalousis’ who remains involved with the dig. “Regular antiques, I can give a fly about. But things that I can exhume out of the ground--that’s better than sliced bread.”
The work is painstaking, tedious. White has found only one significant item: a piece of lavender tile. And she didn’t find it digging, either.
“I sat on it,” she said.
So far, some 600 items have been plucked, cleaned and cataloged from the dig. Nothing shocking. Just the stuff of everyday life, and everyday archeology.
“I wish we could offer you Tutankhamen’s tomb, but we just don’t have it here,” Magalousis said. “But this site is . . . an important piece of Orange County history.”
