Happy New Year

Here's an ad for the Pacific Electric Railway's "Red Cars" and buses, from the Dec. 31, 1950 issue of the Huntington Beach News. Today they'd also tell you that it was "green" to take mass transit.
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Update: Doug McIntosh sent me this great image of a Pacific Electric token to go with this post. Thanks, Doug!

The man who saved Buena Park

Today's photos show what is now known as George Bellis Park, at 7171 Eighth St. in Buena Park. The first photo is undated but probably from the 1940s. The second photo is from 1956. I was curious to know who George Bellis was, did some digging, and found the answer interesting,...

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The citizens of Buena Park were alarmed when they heard that the new Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) was going to cut their town in half. The plans showed a 27-foot-high berm bisecting the community, with only one pass-through, on Grand Ave., connecting the two halves. Moreover, the plans called for only one freeway exit for the city. By most accounts, it would have ruined the city.

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The community fought tooth and nail for a better plan. Buena Park Chamber of Commerce president George Bellis was probably most responsible for getting the State to adopt a new below-ground-level plan for the freeway with three bridges connecting the north to the south, and improved freeway access.

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Bellis spent most of his life in the automobile sales and tire business, and had served as president of the Southern California Automotive Dealers Association. He was also Buena Park's representative to the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Orange County. Perhaps his experience with these and other trade organizations gave him experience in dealing with Sacramento.

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George Bellis was also responsible for organizing the creation of the ten-acre Buena Park Recreation Park and softball field on land rented from the Santiary District. In the 1940s, the Buena Park Lynx, the local womens softball team, was contending at national championships, and the community got behind the effort to give them a decent place to play. The park, which was later renamed in honor of Bellis, also served as the first home of Buena Park's Silverado Days festival.

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Speaking of the "Center of the Southland", the Buena Park Historical Society's Annual Board Installation event will be held Jan. 26, 6pm, at the Stage Stop Hotel, 6601 Beach Blvd.

Christmas in Orange County

Before I give myself a little Christmas vacation from blogging, I'm posting an assortment of images from Orange County Christmases past. The image above shows the parlour of the Keech House at 201 E. Washington St. in Santa Ana in about 1910. It remains one of the city's most attractive homes even today. Among his various accomplishments, E. E. Keech was one of Orange County's first prominent attorneys. He also founded the Orange County Law Library, was a president and founding member of the Orange County Bar Association, and trained a young Earle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) in the law. I'm sure I'll be writing more about Keech and his interesting family in the coming year.
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The next photo shows the Irvine family home (current site of the Katie Wheeler Branch Library) at Christmas 1944. James Irvine's beloved hunting dogs are asleep under the tree.

The third photo, (below,) shows the Church of Reflections (next to the Lake of Reflections) at Knott's Berry Farm at Christmas in 1963. Both the church and the lake were recently removed, although bits of the church have been incorporated into a new version of the building on the other side of Beach Blvd. This removal, along with the removal of the Little Chapel by the Lake, meets the Constitutional requirement of separation of church and theme park.

My final image for today, (below,) shows Santa Claus visiting the Orange County Board of Supervisors at the County Hall of Administration in December 1988. Supervisors Tom Riley and Don Roth are contributing gifts to a toy drive. Later, Roth resigned in a scandal that involved him accepting gifts.

If I don't post again before the 25th, I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Fullerton Police, bank robbers & the Frontier Motel

I just added about 100 images to the Orange County Archives' Flickr account. The two sample images above are both from Fullerton in 1927. The first (top) shows the entire Fullerton Police Department. (Back row, from left: Ernest Garner, Steve R. Mills, Frank Moore, Robert C. Mills. Front row, from left: John Trezise, Chief James M. Pearson, John Gregory, Jake Deist.)

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The second image shows Fullerton P.D. Patrolman Ernest E. Garner with criminals W. Benjamin Morrison (left) and George Horine (right) of San Jose. The two 19-year-olds robbed a bank in Saratoga, California the week before and were on the run. The one at the wheel of the car fell asleep as they drove through Fullerton, and crashed near the corner of Spadra Rd. (now Harbor Blvd.) and Whiting Ave. These are the best dressed teenage criminals I've ever seen.

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"Don't tell my mother," Morrison begged the police. "She had carbon monoxide poisoning a couple of years ago and lost her memory. If she finds out about this it will give her a setback."

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On a completely unrelated note, the WalterWorld blog has a nice before-and-after post about the Frontier Motel in Anaheim. In the 1950s, this motel's promotial literature referred to it as a "New Ranch Style Motel," and stated, "We Aim at Pleasing You - and We Hope We Hit the Mark!" It was hard to go wrong marketing "Ranch Style" anything in the 1950s. And of course the Western theme tied nicely into both mid-Century pop culture (in general) and Frontierland at Disneyland.

Rankin's, Santa Ana

In honor of all of those who are still doing their last-minute Christmas shopping, here are a couple photos of Rankin Dry Goods (a.k.a. Rankin's Department Store) around the time of its opening in 1917. The building still stands at 117 W. 4th St. (at Sycamore) in Santa Ana, but the business is long gone.

O.C. Fair, Silverado Canyon & Pancho Barnes

Reader Barry Kazmer sent me this photo of the 1962 Orange County Fair. He writes, "I also have a bunch of photos of the O.C. Fair Rodeo from 1964 as well. I did that for a summer school class in Anthropology I took. I used the RCA (Rodeo Cowboys Association) as a foreign culture and I managed to get an A in the class.”
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A few days ago, yet another O.C. book from Arcadia Publishing hit the shelves: Images of America: Silverado Canyon, by Canyon resident and Silverado Branch Library volunteer Susan Deering.
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A rough-cut of Nick Spark's documentary, "The Legend of Pancho Barnes" will be shown at the Planes of Fame Air Museum at the Chino Airport, Jan. 22, 5:30pm, as a fundraiser to complete the project. The "suggested donation" to KOCE Foundation is $50-$100 at the door. Contact Andrea Eldridge to reserve seats. Barnes had a home and private airport in Laguna Beach.

Sunkist, KOCE, and the Story of Orange County

Today's image is the cover of a 1932 coloring book from the California Fruit Growers Exchange. The illustration isn't identified as Orange County, but it might as well be. The CFGE created the iconic "Sunkist" brand around 1907, and in 1952 they changed their name to Sunkist Growers, Inc. A marketing powerhouse, the CFGE even made orange juice a standard breakfast drink for most Americans. As Phil Brigandi likes to say, they "could have even taught Walt Disney a thing or two about marketing." (Thanks to Doug McIntosh for the image.)
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I recently discovered that KOCE-TV has posted The Story of Orange County on YouTube. This series was created for the County's centennial in 1989, and features an interesting mix of historians and other experts. Here are the segments, in order:

Episode One: "Birth of a County"

• Part 1: With Paul Apodaca, Norman Neuerburg and Harry Francisco
• Part 2: With Bernardo Yorba, Tony Forster, Richard J. O'Neill, Tony Moiso & Florence Mitchell
• Part 3: With Steve Donaldson, Glenn Dumke & Pam Hallan-Gibson

Episode Two: "Dawn of a New Era"

• Part 1: With Irvin Chapman & William Myers
• Part 2: With Doug Langevin, Esther Cramer & Barbara Milkovich
• Part 3: With Eugene Hanson & SAAAB trainees

Strandt's Indian Map

The famous Strandt Map (Courtesy Orange County Archives)

This is the map of Indian village and burial sites in Orange County that Herman F. Strandt created in 1921. This post is sort of an addendum to my Dec. 13th entry. More information about Strandt can be found in Paul G. Chace's paper on Locating the Buck Ranch Prehistoric Burial Ground, Huntington Beach, California -- which is an interesting bit of reading in its own right.

A different copy of the map, from Jim Sleeper.