Saturday, August 01, 2009

O.C.'s birthday, Post Offices, Fox, Disneyland, etc

One hundred and twenty years ago today, after nearly two decades of attempts to break free, Orange County finally separated from Los Angeles County. In honor of this occasion, I'll be giving a very brief "birthday presentation" at the beginning of Tuesday's meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The 1887 woodcut above shows the Santa Ana home of Col. E. E. Edwards, the Assemblyman who introduced a new bill to create our new county.
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Thanks to the Register for shedding more light on the Post Office situation I blogged about yesterday. Click here to read their article. It seems as many as 20 O.C. post offices could be closed. I'm trying to figure out from their list just how many of these are historically significant structures. Obviously Huntington Beach is, and I fear "Spurgeon Station" may refer to the snazzy 1930s Federal Building & Post Office in Downtown Santa Ana. If you know more about the histories of the post offices on the "watch list," please leave a note in the "comment" section for this post.
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The Fullerton Historic Theater Foundation (the group preserving the Fox Theater) asks concerned citizens to attend a public hearing at the Fullerton City Council Chambers, 303 W. Commonwealth Ave, on Aug. 4, at 6:30pm. "Come support the Fox’s request before the Redevelopment Agency to provide financing to begin major Fox improvements."
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Disneyland history fans will want to check out Walt Disney's 1965 speech before original "cast members" (Club 55) at the Disneyland Hotel, which has been posted to YouTube. It's about ten minutes of Walt candidly recalling the beginnings of Disneyland.
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As of today, E-Ticket magazine will no longer sell back issues with exceptions of issues sold at their "Last Ride" party at Griffith Park on Aug. 7th. The good news is that one final issue has just been completed. For more details, visit E-Ticket's website. I will miss this excellent publication.
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Colleen Robledo is redoing the Orange County Heritage Coordinating Council's website. If you had an account on the old site, it should still work, – but you'll need to reset your password.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Olive Station U.S. Post Office on Orange-Olive Road is on the list of post offices that may be closed. After reading the article in The Register I went to the post office and photographed it from the outside, then posted that photo to Flickr, since I never did get a good photo of it before. This post office has been at this location in the Orange-Olive Center strip mall since 1964. - Daralee

Chris Jepsen said...

Yes, I love that they saved the old "Party Pantry" sign and reused it for the Post Office.

How strange to close this one. Hasn't there been an Olive P.O, since 1887?

Anonymous said...

There has been a post office in Olive since February 1887. It was a small, wooden building near the corner of what is now Lincoln Avenue, just east of Orange-Olive Road. During the early '20s the post office relocated to Lee McClelland's brick building at the northeastern corner of Lincoln and Orange-Olive Road. After the brick building burned down in 1961, the post office was housed in the Santa Fe depot across the street on Orange-Olive Road. When the depot was raised in 1964, the post office moved to its current location. The post office is small and most people in Orange use the one on Tustin Avenue, so this is probably why it is slated for closure. - Daralee