20 Years of the O.C. History Roundup

Part of the first post on O.C. History Roundup, in 2006.

 Along with being the 250th birthday of the United States, this summer is also the much-less-auspicious 20th anniversary of this blog. Today, it's primarily a way to share the historical articles I write. But it didn't begin that way. Here's a shamelessly self-indulgent retrospective:

When I launched the blog in 2006, it was going to primarily be focused on Huntington Beach history. That lasted maybe two weeks before I turned it into the O.C. History Roundup. Back then, there was no way to figure out which local historical organizations were doing what. My intent was to create a clearinghouse for all kinds of local history news. On the Roundup, event listings were topped off with a historical photo and perhaps a historical fact or two, just to keep it interesting. Sometimes I'd also use to blog to correct historical misstatements that appeared in the local newspapers, (Remember newspapers?!?), or I'd recount some small local history adventure I'd been part of myself. Rarely did any attempts at substantive historical work appear on the blog in those early years, because that wasn't the blog's purpose yet. 

At Fullerton Public Library with the late great local historians Jim Sleeper and Esther Cramer, 2009

But gradually, historical organizations began posting their own events on social media, making much of my blog's original purpose obsolete. 

Meanwhile, I'd been doing progressively more real historical research and writing on my own. Back then, I had more free time on my hands, people followed their favorite blogs religiously, and spam had not yet ruined the ability to host a productive "comments" section. I was posting new (albeit brief) content multiple times a week.

Over time, my entries generally became longer and more in-depth. By the mid-2010s, some of my blog posts were in the old format while others were decidedly more substantive. Some took a month or two to research and write. Others took (and TAKE) as much as ten or twelve years. Unfortunately, around the same time, circumstances beyond my control began to make life more complicated for me, and I lost much of my free time.  

Clockwise from left: Local historians Phil Brigandi, Chris Jepsen, and Stephanie George, and California State Historian Kevin Starr, Chapman University, 2011.

By 2018, I was really getting into the long form stuff, but the posts were less frequent. And in 2019, the death of my friend and mentor, Phil Brigandi, made me realize that I needed to take this work even more seriously. By attrition, I was suddenly among "the old guard" of Orange County history, and I began to feel additional responsibility. Still, with my time constraints, the best I've been able to do is post one or two articles each month. 

Not that anyone reads blogs anymore. 

More specifically, they don't read blogs unless a post on social media nudges them there. So, I do a lot of nudging now. And even then, good luck holding the modern reader's attention past the first paragraph. But I persist, because it needs to be done and because I'm possibly the only local historian left who's looking at the whole county across all eras. It's a nice market to be sure, but it's been an important gig in O.C. since at least the 1920s.

With some of the best theme park history bloggers at Knott's Berry Farm, 2010.

Over the last couple years, I've been going back and gradually reworking some of my earlier, lighter-weight blog posts into more substantive historical articles. This is particularly true for some of the most popular subjects on my blog, like defunct restaurants. Certain posts get an outsized number of eyeballs on them because of their topic, and I feel it's incumbent on me to go back and make these sleeper hits into something more worth reading. Nostalgia is a popular but nutritionally devoid snack. Why not serve a Belisle's-sized lunch instead?

Meanwhile, some of new longer-form blog posts in recent years have been surprisingly well received, including my 2023 article about Al Capone's attempt to buy the Rancho Santa Margarita, which was quickly picked up by the press and ended up "above the fold" on the front page the Orange County Register.

At one of my many lectures, San Juan Capistrano, 2025

As of this moment, there have been 4,487,326 views of my 1,476 blog posts. Even if only a fraction of those folks retain much knowledge about our history, it makes my effort worthwhile.

I still have a LOT of upcoming new articles in the pipeline that are 95% done but require a last minor but time-consuming bit of research before being ready for primetime. And there are endless additional topics I'd still like to tackle. There's no end in sight for the O.C. History Roundup.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped and inspired me over the years. And huge thanks to all of you reading my blog -- whether this is your first visit, your 100th, or if you've been a regular since 2006. There'd be no point doing what I do if you weren't interested. As Jim Sleeper once noted, if you're uninterested in the history of the place you live, "they should throw dirt in your face, because you're already dead."