Happy Halloween!

The photo above shows the Excelsior Creamery float in the Anaheim Halloween Parade, probably sometime in the 1940s. The map below is from one of the earliest Halloween Haunts at Knott's Berry Farm, in 1976.

Duck hunting at Bolsa Chica

I recently stumbled across this image in U.S. Geological Survey's online photo library. It shows the Bolsa Chica Gun Club in Huntington Beach, just after the big earthquake of 1933. (Note the huge crack long the road.) Until yesterday, I didn't know the USGS even had a historic photo collection like this, but man do they have some cool stuff!
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While we're on the subject of the Bolsa Chica Gun Club, here's an odd excerpt from J. A. Graves' 1928 book, My Seventy Years in California,...

“The Bolsa Chica, a very aristocratic duck club, which bought a large body of land in the Bolsa Chica Rancho, near the present town of Huntington Beach, always had most excellent shooting until quite recently. The Westminster Club was near there. I was one of the organizers of the latter, and shot there many years. The Blue Wing [Club] adjoined the Westminster. I was at the Westminster one day, heard a shot on the Blue Wing, followed by a yell from various members, and looking up, saw the sky raining ducks. Mr. J. E. Fishburn, for many years president of the Merchants National Bank, wanted one duck to complete his limit. He picked out a big sprig [a.k.a. a pintail duck] and fired at it. A flock of sprig were circling in, ready to light. They came in range of his gun, as he fired, and he killed, with one shot, fourteen sprig. This seems like a hard story to ask any sane person to believe, but Mr. Fishburn is alive, and he and several members of his club will verify it.”

And what makes for a more charming anecdote than rich Angelenos slaughtering waterfowl? In fact, there were something like 13 gun clubs (a.k.a "duck clubs") in the Bolsa Chica area alone, to say nothing of all those near Irvine or in the marshes between Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa. Most members were rich businessmen from Los Angeles.
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Graves also gives an account of an standard outing to a gun club, circa 1911. He's awfully wordy, so I will paraphrase:
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After work on Friday, he would take the Pacific Electric or hitch a ride in a friend's "machine" down to Bolsa Chica. Taking an automobile let him avoid a dark, two-mile ride from the P.E. stop to the Club in a mule-pulled wagon. On the other hand, it meant sharing the unpaved roads with innumerable slow wagons hauling sugar beets to the Alamitos sugar factory.
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Once at the Club, he met with other members who would be shooting the next day. They had a hearty dinner together and selected blinds for the following morning. After dinner, members spent the evening chatting, reading, playing card games and relaxing before going to sleep.
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The keeper awakened each of them with a rap on their doors at 5:00 a.m. They put on their hunting gear, ate breakfast, and headed out into the darkness toward their blinds. Thirty minutes before sunrise, a bell rang, letting everyone know they could begin blazing away. Initially, they might see no game, but would hear a few guns popping in the distance -- sometimes at neighboring clubs.
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At this point that Graves regales us with a depiction of the slaughter and maiming of innumerable waterfowl -- All against the backdrop of the great outdoors and a glorious sunrise.
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By noon, most of our mighty Nimrods had bagged their limit. Having once again defended democracy against a potential duck incursion, they retired to Bourbon and cold showers at the Club. This was followed by a "good hot lunch" before making the drive back to Los Angeles.

First American goes digital

Good news! First American Corp. -- which has one of the best collections of early Orange County photos anywhere -- is beginning to put some of their images online. Their website lacks captions, but it includes some great old photos. I'm posting two of them here today. Above is an image of employees of the Yorba Linda Citrus Association. Below is a circa 1960s image of the monorail leaving the Disneyland Hotel.

They've also posted a short video about the history of First American, which is worth a look. Let's hope this is just the beginning!

Golf, H.B., Woodimals, and the Santa Ana winds

Today's photo shows Coach Lloyd H. Hamren (1886-1975) and the Huntington Beach High School Golf Team on May 2, 1951. Coach Hamren looks like he must have been quite a character. The municipal golf course -- which was adjacent to the High School -- is all condos now. But what isn't?
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Ken at OutsideTheBerm just posted a nice piece on Forrest Morrow and his "Woodimals," which once resided on Knott's Berry Farm's Jungle Island.
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The recent mild Santa Ana wind conditions have stirred the pot again on the perennial argument over spelling and pronunciation: "Santa Ana winds" (like the city) or "santana winds" (possibly a reference to the devil). The Register ran an article about this last year, which generated quite a few comments on their website. (Who knows why they closed down the comments on this article.)
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Jim Sleeper gives about the best accounting of "Santa Ana wind" history I've seen, in pages 71-79 of his first Orange County Almanac:

"...'Devil Wind,' a label inspired no doubt, by the hellish nature of these zephyrs. To support this, the Indian word zanta (possibly Swahili) was dredged up and translated 'devil.' As explained in the Santa Ana Register, 'Santana, of course, was merely a corruption of that well known Indian word,' a theory that holds up about as well as would a snowball in the subject under discussion...

"However, on the authority of John P. Harrington, a research assistant of the Smithsonian Institute, there is a grain of support for the old Devil theory, if not the name that goes with it.

"'Years ago [wrote Harrington], I had a unique experience. I drove with an old Indian from Olive up the Santa Ana River Canyon. Pretty soon after leaving Olive we seem to have been on the north side of the Santa Ana River. We went through a big kind of low place. The Indian said that that was the devil's house, that the devil lived there in the form of a whirlwind, and that a whirlwind is often seen there...'"

Jim also cites Fr. St. John O'Sullivan's interview with Dona Magdalena Murillo (who was born on the Rancho Las Bolsas in 1848), in which she explains that the wind got its name because it "came down the Santa Ana Canyon."
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Also, Jim points out that the first instance of the term "Santa Ana winds" in print, was in the April 12, 1873 Anaheim Gazette.
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So I'm voting for "Santa Ana winds," even if the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce doesn't like it much.

Halloween at Knott's, 1960

Long before there was a "Knott's Scary Farm" or "Halloween Haunt," the folks at Knott's Berry Farm clearly knew how to get into the spirit of Halloween. The photo above shows the staff of the Chicken Dinner Restaurant on Oct. 31, 1960. There weren't many days left until the presidential election. Note the "broach" Cordelia Knott wore on her costume in the closeup image below. Squint hard and you'll recognize it as a campaign badge for Orange County's own Richard Nixon.

St. Catherine's, Balboa Island, Vans, Catalina, etc.

Today's image is an old postcard from Tom Pulley's collection, showing the library of St. Catherine's Military Academy in Anaheim. I love the old radio and the tile around the fireplace.

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Today was a good day for stumbling across things I wasn't expecting. First, I learned there's a Balboa Island Historical Museum. It's open Wednesdays and Saturdays, 10am-2pm, at 502 S. Bayfront, Suite A (upstairs). They ask that you "please call to confirm the hours: (949) 675-3952. Or to make an appointment: (949) 723-4226."

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I also ran across a couple books of local historical interest that I didn't know existed,...

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First, there's Catalina by Sea: A Transportation History (2006) by Jeannine L. Pedersen of the Catalina Island Museum. It's an Arcadia Publishing book that includes material on the boats between Catalina and various ports, including Dana Point and Newport Harbor.

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Also, there's Vans: Off the Wall: Stories of Sole from Vans Originals by Vans Vice President of Marketing, Doug Palladini. Vans has been an Orange County institution since they began as the Van Doren Rubber Co. in 1966. They opened their first store here, made their shoes here, and are currently based in Cypress.

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By the way, the L.A. Times has an article about the two Depression-era paintings that survived Newport Harbor High School's recent discombobulation. Nice that something did.

La Habra, Doris Walker, Pancho Barnes, Flickr, etc

Taken in 1958 to document a road construction site, this photo from the Orange County Road Dept. almost looks like it was staged. The boys are crossing Coyote Creek in La Habra, near Lambert Road. Today's children, of course, will never be endangered by makeshift bridges, polluted creeks, harmful UV rays, or scary farm animals. They will remain safely in their beige stucco boxes, playing video games and watching "educational" television.
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Historian Doris I. Walker will be the guest speaker at the Dana Point Lighthouse Society meeting on Oct 22. She'll preview her newest (12th) book, Images of America: Orange County, A Natural History. The meeting will take place at the Dana Point Tennis Center, 24911 Calle De Tenis, 6:00-7:30pm. Thanks to the folks at Arcadia Publishing, I've already seen the book. It includes many good images I've never seen in print before. And although she's mostly limited to captions, Doris' winning writing style shines through.
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Speaking of books, I just finished The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes, by Lauren Kessler. It's a history of one of the first female aviators and her enormously colorful life. It's not a new book, but it was new to me, and I wanted to point it out. Barnes' Orange County connections included her beach house and air strip at Laguna Beach, and her visits to Martin Field and the Orange County Airport.
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Someone has started a new Yahoo! Group for Orange County history. Click on over to check it out. I look forward to seeing what this grows into.
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And while we're on the subject of online resources, I see the Orange County History group on Flickr has reached 145 members and well over 2,000 entries. I love to check in and see what other people are sharing.
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With my new computer mostly working, I'm once again able to do some video editing. I've already posted two videos of the 1938 flood to the O.C. Archives' Flickr site, and two videos from the Allison Honer Collection (showing the building of Buffum's annex in Santa Ana and the building of the Buena Park Mall) for the Orange County Historical Society's Flickr site.

Huntington Beach, Don Nixon, Katella Ranch, etc.

Here's a small map of Orange County from about 1900. Nifty, no?
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The grand re-opening of the historic Huntington Beach High School Auditorium and Bell Tower (1926, Allison & Allison) will be held Oct. 18, at noon. The program will also feature "a special performance of Titanic: The Musical" (Is that a very dark comedy, or just an opportunity for one?)
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Vic at Photos of the Forgotten posted a nice postcard image of Presidential brother Don Nixon's restaurant, and then linked to a interesting article about Don's Orange County chain and the hornets nest it stirred up. See the article at Restaurant-ing Through History.
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Artists Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily have restored some interesting architectural details from Anaheim's historic Rea House. (That's Rea as in Kate and Ella Rea. Kate. Ella. Katella. Get it?) Read about it on Kevin's blog.

Irvine Park, MCAS Tustin, OCN, cemeteries, etc.

The photo above comes from Jim Sleeper's, Bears To Briquettes: A History of Irvine Park, 1897-1997, (which may be reprinted soon), in which he writes,

"In 1967, Irvine Park turned seventy. To honor that milestone, some 1500 well-wishers gathered on October 7 for an old-fashioned celebration. ...Prominent among the honorees were longtime county supervisor Tom Talbert, then 89, who fathered many park improvements... retired custodian Fay Irwin, 69, whose family had tended the place for 40 years; businessman Jim Liebig, 97, who got Irvine's permission to change the park's name; and historian Don Meadows, 70..."

The photo above, taken by Jim, shows (from left to right) Liebig, Meadows, Irwin and Talbert. But here's the twist: While digging through the County Archives, I found the image below,...
There's young Mr. Sleeper taking the photo that appears in the book!
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A lot has happened since I last had the chance to post. For instance,...
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According to County Historical Commissioner Don Dobmeier, the County is reconsidering their stance on the economic viability of saving the MCAS Tustin "lighter-than-air" hangar they inherited. If they decide against reuse, it would mean that both of the historic hangars have wrecking balls in their futures. (The City of Tustin already decided not to keep the hangar they control.) The sad loss of these landmarks -- the largest free-standing structures in the world -- would be hard to get used to. [Update: I now hear more rumblings that the County is still looking at more options for reuse, but I haven't heard anything specific yet. Generally, this seems like good news. 11/13/09]
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Griselda Castillo, who has been overseeing some of the County's historic parks since Rob Selway's retirement, has now been named Manager of Historic Parks for the whole system. I wish her luck with what seems a daunting but potentially very rewarding job.
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The Dreger Clock was finally officially unveiled to the public. Photos of the dedication are posted on OutsideTheBerm.
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Casa Romantica has named Lisa Merryman as their new interim director.

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A large mountain of "Beta" videotapes have been delivered to the Orange County Archives, comprising the 10-year run of the Orange County Newschannel (OCN). Of course, it's going to take a lot of time, work, and antiquated equipment to make this material available to the public in something resembling a useful format.
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The Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society will hold their annual Historical Cemetery Tour on Oct 17, with tours from 10 am to 3 pm. This guided historical tour of Fairhaven Memorial Park and Santa Ana Cemetery features costumed actors portraying historic figures who share stories from Orange County’s past. This year's program is entitled, "What's In A Name?" More information is available on the SAHPS website.