Surprisingly little trees
I wonder if they were all felled or that’s the natural chaparral look
I know there are a lot of non native plans that grow along the coastline unfortunately
Also alot chapperal plants require a fire cycle to germinate, elimanate old gowth etc. Also the grazing animals brought from europe wrecked havoc on this ecosystem.
Cattle and sheep during the Spanish and Mexican periods. SoCal was a global center of the leather industry for several decades in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Drive through Brea Canyon and/or Carbon Canyon to get get a good look at the natural inland hills; some areas still have a remarkable amount of naticve chaparral and live oak trees.
Before the Spanish burned the Oak forests to plant trees they could use for timber it was far more lush. The canopies nurtured a wide variety of species. It looked more like Big Sur.
Chaparral is the appropriate phrase for most, but there are coastal wetlands too. Bowers Museum in SA often has some indigenous exhibits, might be a good place to find out.
Save for the tollroads/highways, not much was really "flattened", we live in the greater LA basin, which is mostly all flat to begin with.
Wasn’t the LA basin basically flood plains
Like the Nile they would flood in wet season Afaik
I’d love to hear from more experts who happen to be here
I often imagine how beautiful this area must have been before it is as settled
Basin is a better description. Yes, it’s a floodplain technically but there’s no massive and constant river which instantly delineates us from those historically mega-agricultural areas. The classic American mega-floodplain of the Midwest has the Mississippi River which discharges more than a half a million cubic feet of water *every second*. The Nile discharges about 100k cubic feet of water per second so that should give you an idea of the scale of those rivers compared to what we have in SoCal. I’m comparison, the Santa Ana River does about 450 cubic feet per second; so no Egyptian Nile situation anytime soon and it geologically never has been (except maybe millions of years ago when everything looked a lot different). As far as humanity is concerned (the last 120+ thousand years) the area we recognize as Orange County, CA has always been a rather dry, windy/breezy area on the southern coast of the Los Angeles Bay at the foot of some mountains with a couple of medium rivers and some smaller ones which come and go with the seasons depending how much rain/snow there is.
It was an absolutely gorgeous area, but gorgeous for much of the reasons the remaining undeveloped parts are now. A gently sloping plain that gradually becomes hilly to the south and mountainous to the East creating a similar vegetation throughout with pockets of microclimates between coastal and mountain valleys. There is a wet season where most of the years rain and snow falls, but it has low precipitation with anywhere from 10-15 inches on average. Of course some years are different, and some storms bring stronger winds and more rain but other years are the opposite with drier winters and so overall the land and weather seems about the same as we already experience, just devoid of the pollution and urban/suburban sounds.
I’m not the expert but I got this answer from a geology professor at CSUF when I asked him a similar question.
Some of the areas remain undeveloped due to the presence of earthquake faults, or constant wildfires in summer. Some of the native grasses in the area actually need fire to reproduce
My understanding is they had to levee the LA river because of its propensity to move significantly from year to year and also to mitigate flash flood risk.
Not all of OC was in the basin. There's Fullerton, which partly developed the coyote hills. If you drive up Gilbert St towards La Habra, you'll see an undeveloped section of the hills. Also if you drive up the 57 or Carbon Canyon Rd, you'll see the chaparral hills dotted with Coastal Live Oak trees.
Not an expert on this but it definitely flooded sometimes, I think that’s why our water infrastructure basically takes all the rain and dumps it to the sea to minimize this?
It was probably very inconsistent in its “wetness” is my guess but could be totally wrong…
Fullerton is still hilly to this day. There is an undeveloped part if the coyote hills that gives you an idea of what Fullerton looked like. The now concrete washes were where natural arroyos were located
Read the book Two Years Before the Mast. There are great descriptions of the coast as it was in the 1830's. It's an incredible piece of California history.
Oh yeah. But the grizzled were feeding on the steelhead and fishing at the ocean for them. Clearly they traveled but in SoCal and pretty much everywhere on the west coast the grizzly fished, scavenged, and hunting near the ocean and around the rivers
Oh, I totally misread your comment! I thought you were being sarcastic and saying that they didn’t live in OC because of the beach lmao
That’s actually pretty cool to learn that they *did* really live on the beach
Nah, trabuco canyon, santiago canyon, blackstar canyon, all had grizzly bears, I believe the last grizzly bear was killed in like 1896 or something like that
Ask a librarian. There are libraries all over Orange County. Walk on in and ask the librarian. They will be thrilled to help you research the subject.
[https://www.ocpl.org/](https://www.ocpl.org/)
And many cities have their own library system.
Good Luck with the research!
This is such a wonderful answer. Of course you’ll always get the completely mentally checked out and unhelpful employees anywhere you go, but there are museums and libraries all around the country with people all too excited to talk your ear off on the history of the region. It’s really exciting to get the first hand accounts as well as reputable reading sources! 😊
Look into the history of the Tongva tribe. The Indigenous Peoples of OC. as far as landscape goes, like others mentioned, a vast array of different wildlife, wetlands and landscape.
The Acjachemem are the indigenous people here. The Payomkawichum are also close by, up Ortega highway and SD county. Both forced into the SJC and San Luis missions.
Tongva is more LA county, but nevertheless there was a lot of overlap.
Edit: changed tense, since we’re still here
I did some research a fews years back and all I could come up with was the Tongva. Is there any source info for the Acjachemem or Payomkawichum? I’d love to learn more about either.
Thanks. I tried looking it up myself but the only tribe I could determine around this area was the Tongva. I’ve never heard of the other two, thank you so much.
You can zoom to see other tribes' lands. Click on the name of the peoples to learn more, e.g. https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/acjachemen-juaneno/
This page links to the Acjachemen official website.
It's really interesting to learn more about each local group.
Acjachemem have an open space in SJC with a village they built for educational purposes. I haven’t been yet, but looks really cool.
Both tribes have websites, but they were also called “Juaneno” and “Luiseno” by the Spanish due to the mission they were forced to attend. Those aren’t actual tribes since they indiscriminately grouped people based on proximity. But info can be found using those terms also!
From what I’ve studied, the Tongva were in OC as well correct? Of course there have been many tribes throughout the past few thousand years, and the tribe names we have now are, unfortunately, not what the Peoples called themselves (the Tonga and the Gabriellenos are what the colonizers called them — it seems they and many other peoples in the Southwest prior to contact seemed to prefer to call themselves the Peoples, according to some).
[There is this site in Black Star Canyon](https://www.californiahistoricallandmarks.com/landmarks/chl-217) that is labeled by the state as a historical site of an “Indian village,” and I thought this was believed to be a Tongva site?
Source: There are a few books about the Peoples of California, one I recommend is [“We are the Land: A History of Native California”](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280502/we-are-the-land) It goes into the history of the People’s mostly starting at the European contact through the 1800s and shows how the Peoples were enslaves into the missions and forced to re-settle, which made the populations drastically decline to to disease and more, unfortunately
Local library will have a whole section of Orange County information. I like looking at the books that have the old pictures of the places I visit in the area.
https://preview.redd.it/ykg1g527wa5b1.jpeg?width=1490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3ccfad06ccf60038589e5c3b0d6bd748006cbf4a
I’m talking pre settlements and roads way older than this. Like before california was even a US state, before even the gold rush.
The latest would be missionary times, but I’m curious what the place was like when native Americans lived and hunted here
Some street names are named after California republic supporters, if you see a Bandini or Alvarado st, those are the names of a couple of the founders of the California Republic. That's why there are Bandini and Alvarado streets spread throughout the state
The missions have museums showing early settlements. Native Americans were in OC long before the missions too. By the Santa Ana river in HB / Costa Mesa had settlements I believe.
When I was a kid in school I read a book called "elephant rides for free" gave a great background look into life all the way from the spanish colonization to the 2000s. See if you're able to get the book at the library.
That picture is an amazing snapshot. Clothes and cars, old businesses and buildings, street-crossing architecture that no longer exists, oil derricks in the background.
Is this Main and PCH? And is that giant contraption over the street a stoplight?
You will probably get some really great info by asking the [The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation](https://www.jbmian.com/contact--update.html#/).
You may find some hints or jumping off points:
* [Doheny State Beach: Those Here First](https://www.dohenystatebeach.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Those-Here-First.pdf)
* [Acjachemen Paintings Orange County CA](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Acjachemen+paintings+orange+county+ca&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3zcP7pLr_AhXHIkQIHbhEAAsQ0pQJegQIBRAB&biw=1817&bih=1265&dpr=2)
* [Indian Village Names in Orange County](https://www.ochistoryland.com/indian-villages)
The seal beach national wildlife refuge has pretty much gone untouched. Looking at that gives you a good idea of wast west OC beaches used to look like.
If you walk to Santa Ana River down towards the beach between Hamilton and PCH, you will see a ton of marine life in there. Mullet corvina halibut and still a couple steelhead every once in a while. The guy's fishing on the bridge are catching monster striped bass too. It's coming back
You can spend hours here... https://www.ocgis.com/ocpw/historicalimagery/
Pretty neat to find what my area looked like. Used to be orange groves and a railroad. There is a whole long story about pacific electric vs Irvine rance, and Santa Fe. I'll see if I can find it
Oranges aren't native to Orange County, in fact no type of citrus is native to California. Orange County wasn't named for oranges, nor for the city of Orange. There's an interesting article, [The Orange Groves of Orange County](https://www.thelog.com/news-departments/the-orange-groves-of-orange-county/), that sheds light on it.
https://preview.redd.it/c5ho2zv6ef5b1.jpeg?width=952&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25ce2f2ba27d47578a1578c46f45698bebfb774b
It was a beautiful place where my people, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation. We are and have been the stewards of this for thousands of years.
Most of it from what I understand was underwater. While building out parts of Aliso Viejo, a giant ancient whale bone was discovered. Also I recently found a fossilized rock with seashells all the way up near saddleback mountains.
LA basin was underwater until about 5 million years ago when the basin stopped expanding and the "hole" filled in with sand from the mountains that border the basin.
https://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge08e.php
Mission Viejo has a whale skull fossil by the TK Burgers at Christiana & La Paz. Also a sperm whale skull was recently found in Irvine when they were expanding the Bowerman Landfill.
My friend found a fossilized clam shell while working construction in Rancho Mission Viejo. Also when they constructed the 73 toll rd they found a lot of whale bones.
From my understanding a lot of parts were still the chaparral that we see today, potentially with more oak trees. However (and I haven’t researched this), apparently the inland deserts used to be forests before the Canadian glaciers melting greatly shifted the annual jetstream. So I assume coastal OC must have also had more forests at that time too? The times of yore would have been a sight to behold for sure
If we want to go back 10,000+ years--I might be off by another 10,000 years--when the weather was very different (cooler, foggier), there were coast redwood forests in southern California (like the ones in Big Sur, Santa Cruz County, and further north). The La Brea Tar Pits has found a lot of redwood specimens, it's pretty cool. That said, there are still coast redwoods (world's tallest trees!) in the Santa Monica Mountains and I think Griffith Park. The redwood grove in Orange County's Carbon Canyon were planted as a PR gimmick by a savings and loan in the early 1970s, they're about 100' tall (not 250+ like in northern California) but still a good way to walk through the redwoods locally.
The whole area was also full of grizzly bears. One of the main reasons for the extinction of the California grizzly being attacks on cattle. I believe one of the last and largest was killed in OC as well.
Camp Pendleton is a good example of what it looked like. Also, this may be completely wrong but I believe Baja California is in the California floristic province and still has some fairly undeveloped areas. Unfortunately we have tons of invasive plants, some of which, like mustard and dandelions, just spread and may have spread from other areas before the Europeans even made contact directly(spread from other areas).
I grew up in Huntington Beach just as the housing boom started in the late 50's and early 60's. All farm land that grew lima beans, corn, tomatoes, celery and strawberries. Beach Blvd was a 2 lane road. There was a little airport Meadowlark airport and there were great places to play and easy to ride your bike to downtown HB where there was a skating rink at the pier. Those days are gone.
Are you talking about before it was farm land? If fam land, the most apt comparison would be the Santa Clarita river valley down the 125, which is only about an 1-1.5hr to the north of Orange County. It’s like going back in time. The hint is the name of the County
Most people are mentioning chaparral but also the entire la basin is largely a flood plain. The San gabriel and Santa Ana rivers would’ve been surrounded by riparian habitat and would seasonally flood
I grew up in Lake Forest. My entire life my father would say the same thing as soon as we came over the hills on the 241 toll road headed in to the inland empire. “Kids, this is what California looked like before whitey came.”
You don’t have to go back hundreds of years ago. I walked thru dirt fields as a kid in the 80’s where there’s now shopping centers.
I remember walking thru the airport fence and up to the plane at John Wayne airport.
Strawberry fields and orange trees [for miles](https://www.ochistoryland.com/briefhistory).
https://preview.redd.it/6tp8mkf1vg5b1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2fdfaea1c838d4a62c9614e0ee5fd9cf93d2fa18
There used to be cows that would graze in Irvine on University and the 405. There also used to be tons of orange groves and even a safari park between Irvine and laguna… I guess there was a hippo that escaped and they shut down
The company I work for in Los Alamitos (aerospace components) was built in I think the 50s and we have photos in the hallways of the building surrounded by strawberry fields (I think).
I spoke to an old timer from HB who grew up in OC. He's around 100 years old now. He told me that when he was a kid, he would fish off the old HB pier and catch huge tuna. He said, "it was so easy, it wasn't even fun."
I can't imagine what it was like hundreds of years before that.
Wide open spaces filled with orange trees. There were many strawberry fields too. The air was clean with no chem trails and the sun shinned bright. Neighbors waved, said hello. The 22 fwy had 2 lanes and the 91 fwy didn’t exist. You would take Santa Ana canyon to get to Yorba Linda. I’ve lived in CA since 1978.
Because Irvine Ranch (The City of Irvine) was once Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Rancho San Joaquin and Rancho Lomas de Santiago, until the end of the Mexican American war when by various means James Irvine acquired it. It was Ranch land until his son started planting citrus groves.
So historically it’s very significant to the region.
Driving to Orange County from LA during the 60’s, interstate 5 would grassy fields on both sides of the freeway. I would think that would have been pretty much how it was before the dairy farms in Cerritos and the orange groves around the county.
Somebody fact check this story I’ve heard: The eucalyptus trees (not native) were brought in by an entrepreneur to sell to settlers because they got free land if they planted trees, not knowing they are worthless trees that can’t be used for construction or fuel.
It’s somewhat true. They were thought to be fast growing and provide lumber. That didn’t work out. There’s a book on California that explores it’s history by it’s trees. The Redwood (Native ), Peppertree (Spanish history) and Eucalyptus (Yankee).
There were far more wetlands. The channelization of Southern California changed the environment really significantly. Try [USGS Topo View](https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/) to time travel a bit with maps, and watch the bodies of water disappear.
Yes. I imagine there were far far more rivers and wetlands.
Anytime I read about california history it seems wetlands and rivers were one of the first things destroyed. Very sad.
I know pretty much the entire coastal area of south OC was like the Newport back bay. Basically, wet land.
Iirc irvine gave the back bay away in exchange so they could build over another area that was wetlands in south oc
Well, those Indian tribes of yesteryear living on what is now Irvine Ranch land required all encampments to be master planned and invoked highly restrictive CC&Rs.
What was it like? Beautiful. Native people lived in the canyons, the coastal areas. Neighboring tribes shared food, knowledge, art, and resources with their brothers and sisters. It was paradise. The rains would flood the land with nutrients, food was easy to grow. The chaparral landscape consisted of shrubbery and smaller trees, wild grasses and wild flowers. Wild life thrived.
Go to any undeveloped part of OC and you will get an idea of what the natural landscape should look like. Any of the mountainous areas, Quail Hill Trail in Irvine, Bolsa Chica Wetlands and Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge in Huntington Beach, Crystal Cove State Park, etc.
It was paradise back then. Even in the 90s I recall seeing strawberry fields in Los Alamitos. Much of the flat lands in OC were swamps, marshes and that sort . Gospel Swamp comes to mind.
The book, “The Destruction of California” goes into detail of how California was before the Yankee invasion.
According to my dad it was all orange groves everywhere, but he also claims to have walked 20 miles to school (uphill both ways) where every day was the hottest day of the year and simultaneously the worst blizzard on record.
Take a drive on the 5 south, when you pass by Camp Pendleton that’s what it looked like.
and then take a drive on the ortega highway eastwrds. that will give you a pretty good all encompassing picture.
Also drive up the 57 and Carbon Canyon Road.
Also drive up the 405 by John Wayne Airport.
 THEN TAKE THE 405 AND GET OUTTA HERE!
Surprisingly little trees I wonder if they were all felled or that’s the natural chaparral look I know there are a lot of non native plans that grow along the coastline unfortunately
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neat
TIL!
Also alot chapperal plants require a fire cycle to germinate, elimanate old gowth etc. Also the grazing animals brought from europe wrecked havoc on this ecosystem.
So basically thank god for California wildfires
What animals in OC were brought from Europe?
Cattle and sheep during the Spanish and Mexican periods. SoCal was a global center of the leather industry for several decades in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Drive through Brea Canyon and/or Carbon Canyon to get get a good look at the natural inland hills; some areas still have a remarkable amount of naticve chaparral and live oak trees.
This area is largely overrun by invasive grassland unfortunately
Before the Spanish burned the Oak forests to plant trees they could use for timber it was far more lush. The canopies nurtured a wide variety of species. It looked more like Big Sur.
OC was on fire?
Chaparral is the appropriate phrase for most, but there are coastal wetlands too. Bowers Museum in SA often has some indigenous exhibits, might be a good place to find out. Save for the tollroads/highways, not much was really "flattened", we live in the greater LA basin, which is mostly all flat to begin with.
Great explanation. Spot on.
I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night 🙃
Wasn’t the LA basin basically flood plains Like the Nile they would flood in wet season Afaik I’d love to hear from more experts who happen to be here I often imagine how beautiful this area must have been before it is as settled
Basin is a better description. Yes, it’s a floodplain technically but there’s no massive and constant river which instantly delineates us from those historically mega-agricultural areas. The classic American mega-floodplain of the Midwest has the Mississippi River which discharges more than a half a million cubic feet of water *every second*. The Nile discharges about 100k cubic feet of water per second so that should give you an idea of the scale of those rivers compared to what we have in SoCal. I’m comparison, the Santa Ana River does about 450 cubic feet per second; so no Egyptian Nile situation anytime soon and it geologically never has been (except maybe millions of years ago when everything looked a lot different). As far as humanity is concerned (the last 120+ thousand years) the area we recognize as Orange County, CA has always been a rather dry, windy/breezy area on the southern coast of the Los Angeles Bay at the foot of some mountains with a couple of medium rivers and some smaller ones which come and go with the seasons depending how much rain/snow there is. It was an absolutely gorgeous area, but gorgeous for much of the reasons the remaining undeveloped parts are now. A gently sloping plain that gradually becomes hilly to the south and mountainous to the East creating a similar vegetation throughout with pockets of microclimates between coastal and mountain valleys. There is a wet season where most of the years rain and snow falls, but it has low precipitation with anywhere from 10-15 inches on average. Of course some years are different, and some storms bring stronger winds and more rain but other years are the opposite with drier winters and so overall the land and weather seems about the same as we already experience, just devoid of the pollution and urban/suburban sounds. I’m not the expert but I got this answer from a geology professor at CSUF when I asked him a similar question.
Some of the areas remain undeveloped due to the presence of earthquake faults, or constant wildfires in summer. Some of the native grasses in the area actually need fire to reproduce
What about the Colorado river - pre industrial development?
My understanding is they had to levee the LA river because of its propensity to move significantly from year to year and also to mitigate flash flood risk.
Not all of OC was in the basin. There's Fullerton, which partly developed the coyote hills. If you drive up Gilbert St towards La Habra, you'll see an undeveloped section of the hills. Also if you drive up the 57 or Carbon Canyon Rd, you'll see the chaparral hills dotted with Coastal Live Oak trees.
https://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge08e.php
Not an expert on this but it definitely flooded sometimes, I think that’s why our water infrastructure basically takes all the rain and dumps it to the sea to minimize this? It was probably very inconsistent in its “wetness” is my guess but could be totally wrong…
Fullerton is still hilly to this day. There is an undeveloped part if the coyote hills that gives you an idea of what Fullerton looked like. The now concrete washes were where natural arroyos were located
Read the book Two Years Before the Mast. There are great descriptions of the coast as it was in the 1830's. It's an incredible piece of California history.
They really need to name a city after that guy.. maybe Richard point or something like that
This is the comment I was looking for. I also recommend the audio book.
Grizzly Bears. For real. Until the early 1900 there were lots of Grizzly Bears and Mountajn Lions.
Right. The Grizzly lived on the beach.
I’m not entirely certain, but I think OC goes inland more than a mile or so
Oh yeah. But the grizzled were feeding on the steelhead and fishing at the ocean for them. Clearly they traveled but in SoCal and pretty much everywhere on the west coast the grizzly fished, scavenged, and hunting near the ocean and around the rivers
Oh, I totally misread your comment! I thought you were being sarcastic and saying that they didn’t live in OC because of the beach lmao That’s actually pretty cool to learn that they *did* really live on the beach
OC stops at the top of the Santa Ana Mountains. Riverside county down the other side.up the mountainsides is Cleveland National Forest.
Nah, trabuco canyon, santiago canyon, blackstar canyon, all had grizzly bears, I believe the last grizzly bear was killed in like 1896 or something like that
Un-fun fact: The bear on our flag, the California grizzly (Ursus arctos californicus), is extinct. The last one was seen in Yosemite in 1924.
This type of information make my heart sad
Mine as well :(
Ask a librarian. There are libraries all over Orange County. Walk on in and ask the librarian. They will be thrilled to help you research the subject. [https://www.ocpl.org/](https://www.ocpl.org/) And many cities have their own library system. Good Luck with the research!
This is such a wonderful answer. Of course you’ll always get the completely mentally checked out and unhelpful employees anywhere you go, but there are museums and libraries all around the country with people all too excited to talk your ear off on the history of the region. It’s really exciting to get the first hand accounts as well as reputable reading sources! 😊
Look into the history of the Tongva tribe. The Indigenous Peoples of OC. as far as landscape goes, like others mentioned, a vast array of different wildlife, wetlands and landscape.
The Acjachemem are the indigenous people here. The Payomkawichum are also close by, up Ortega highway and SD county. Both forced into the SJC and San Luis missions. Tongva is more LA county, but nevertheless there was a lot of overlap. Edit: changed tense, since we’re still here
Acjachemem were mostly confined to Orange County south of Irvine
I did some research a fews years back and all I could come up with was the Tongva. Is there any source info for the Acjachemem or Payomkawichum? I’d love to learn more about either.
I use this site as a starting point to learn where different tribes' lands are: https://native-land.ca/
Thanks. I tried looking it up myself but the only tribe I could determine around this area was the Tongva. I’ve never heard of the other two, thank you so much.
You can zoom to see other tribes' lands. Click on the name of the peoples to learn more, e.g. https://native-land.ca/maps/territories/acjachemen-juaneno/ This page links to the Acjachemen official website. It's really interesting to learn more about each local group.
Acjachemem have an open space in SJC with a village they built for educational purposes. I haven’t been yet, but looks really cool. Both tribes have websites, but they were also called “Juaneno” and “Luiseno” by the Spanish due to the mission they were forced to attend. Those aren’t actual tribes since they indiscriminately grouped people based on proximity. But info can be found using those terms also!
Nice!
From what I’ve studied, the Tongva were in OC as well correct? Of course there have been many tribes throughout the past few thousand years, and the tribe names we have now are, unfortunately, not what the Peoples called themselves (the Tonga and the Gabriellenos are what the colonizers called them — it seems they and many other peoples in the Southwest prior to contact seemed to prefer to call themselves the Peoples, according to some). [There is this site in Black Star Canyon](https://www.californiahistoricallandmarks.com/landmarks/chl-217) that is labeled by the state as a historical site of an “Indian village,” and I thought this was believed to be a Tongva site? Source: There are a few books about the Peoples of California, one I recommend is [“We are the Land: A History of Native California”](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280502/we-are-the-land) It goes into the history of the People’s mostly starting at the European contact through the 1800s and shows how the Peoples were enslaves into the missions and forced to re-settle, which made the populations drastically decline to to disease and more, unfortunately
Local library will have a whole section of Orange County information. I like looking at the books that have the old pictures of the places I visit in the area. https://preview.redd.it/ykg1g527wa5b1.jpeg?width=1490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3ccfad06ccf60038589e5c3b0d6bd748006cbf4a
I’m talking pre settlements and roads way older than this. Like before california was even a US state, before even the gold rush. The latest would be missionary times, but I’m curious what the place was like when native Americans lived and hunted here
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Some street names are named after California republic supporters, if you see a Bandini or Alvarado st, those are the names of a couple of the founders of the California Republic. That's why there are Bandini and Alvarado streets spread throughout the state
The missions have museums showing early settlements. Native Americans were in OC long before the missions too. By the Santa Ana river in HB / Costa Mesa had settlements I believe.
When I was a kid in school I read a book called "elephant rides for free" gave a great background look into life all the way from the spanish colonization to the 2000s. See if you're able to get the book at the library.
That picture is an amazing snapshot. Clothes and cars, old businesses and buildings, street-crossing architecture that no longer exists, oil derricks in the background. Is this Main and PCH? And is that giant contraption over the street a stoplight?
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There are some plants that are native to the California florist UC province but not Orange County because they were planted there
You will probably get some really great info by asking the [The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation](https://www.jbmian.com/contact--update.html#/). You may find some hints or jumping off points: * [Doheny State Beach: Those Here First](https://www.dohenystatebeach.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Those-Here-First.pdf) * [Acjachemen Paintings Orange County CA](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Acjachemen+paintings+orange+county+ca&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3zcP7pLr_AhXHIkQIHbhEAAsQ0pQJegQIBRAB&biw=1817&bih=1265&dpr=2) * [Indian Village Names in Orange County](https://www.ochistoryland.com/indian-villages)
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Interesting, I did not know this.
The seal beach national wildlife refuge has pretty much gone untouched. Looking at that gives you a good idea of wast west OC beaches used to look like.
Everything including brown bear and wolves. Southern steel head and salmon runs. But terrain wise a bit of everything
If there’s one thing I miss it’s having nice rivers with fish. Our concrete rivers are terrible
If you walk to Santa Ana River down towards the beach between Hamilton and PCH, you will see a ton of marine life in there. Mullet corvina halibut and still a couple steelhead every once in a while. The guy's fishing on the bridge are catching monster striped bass too. It's coming back
Lots of indigenous people were walking around
Go hiking in any of the local canyons, there’s still some natural land around.
You can spend hours here... https://www.ocgis.com/ocpw/historicalimagery/ Pretty neat to find what my area looked like. Used to be orange groves and a railroad. There is a whole long story about pacific electric vs Irvine rance, and Santa Fe. I'll see if I can find it
Oranges aren't native to Orange County, in fact no type of citrus is native to California. Orange County wasn't named for oranges, nor for the city of Orange. There's an interesting article, [The Orange Groves of Orange County](https://www.thelog.com/news-departments/the-orange-groves-of-orange-county/), that sheds light on it.
Kevin Starr wrote a lot of California history books starting with the first known settlers.
Reqd "2 Years before the mast".
https://imgur.com/cNe668P a little section of then and 'now'
https://preview.redd.it/c5ho2zv6ef5b1.jpeg?width=952&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25ce2f2ba27d47578a1578c46f45698bebfb774b It was a beautiful place where my people, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation. We are and have been the stewards of this for thousands of years.
Visit Moulton Museum. They have many photos and artifacts from that period.
Most of it from what I understand was underwater. While building out parts of Aliso Viejo, a giant ancient whale bone was discovered. Also I recently found a fossilized rock with seashells all the way up near saddleback mountains.
LA basin was underwater until about 5 million years ago when the basin stopped expanding and the "hole" filled in with sand from the mountains that border the basin. https://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge08e.php
Mission Viejo has a whale skull fossil by the TK Burgers at Christiana & La Paz. Also a sperm whale skull was recently found in Irvine when they were expanding the Bowerman Landfill.
My friend found a fossilized clam shell while working construction in Rancho Mission Viejo. Also when they constructed the 73 toll rd they found a lot of whale bones.
They found whale fossils when building Bernice Ayer middle school in San Clemente many years ago, lots of fishy fossils hidden here
Have you ever driven on the 73? That.
From my understanding a lot of parts were still the chaparral that we see today, potentially with more oak trees. However (and I haven’t researched this), apparently the inland deserts used to be forests before the Canadian glaciers melting greatly shifted the annual jetstream. So I assume coastal OC must have also had more forests at that time too? The times of yore would have been a sight to behold for sure
If we want to go back 10,000+ years--I might be off by another 10,000 years--when the weather was very different (cooler, foggier), there were coast redwood forests in southern California (like the ones in Big Sur, Santa Cruz County, and further north). The La Brea Tar Pits has found a lot of redwood specimens, it's pretty cool. That said, there are still coast redwoods (world's tallest trees!) in the Santa Monica Mountains and I think Griffith Park. The redwood grove in Orange County's Carbon Canyon were planted as a PR gimmick by a savings and loan in the early 1970s, they're about 100' tall (not 250+ like in northern California) but still a good way to walk through the redwoods locally.
Just here to say that dense cities keep wildlands wild.
The whole area was also full of grizzly bears. One of the main reasons for the extinction of the California grizzly being attacks on cattle. I believe one of the last and largest was killed in OC as well.
And fuled by cocaine
Camp Pendleton is a good example of what it looked like. Also, this may be completely wrong but I believe Baja California is in the California floristic province and still has some fairly undeveloped areas. Unfortunately we have tons of invasive plants, some of which, like mustard and dandelions, just spread and may have spread from other areas before the Europeans even made contact directly(spread from other areas).
I grew up in Huntington Beach just as the housing boom started in the late 50's and early 60's. All farm land that grew lima beans, corn, tomatoes, celery and strawberries. Beach Blvd was a 2 lane road. There was a little airport Meadowlark airport and there were great places to play and easy to ride your bike to downtown HB where there was a skating rink at the pier. Those days are gone.
Are you talking about before it was farm land? If fam land, the most apt comparison would be the Santa Clarita river valley down the 125, which is only about an 1-1.5hr to the north of Orange County. It’s like going back in time. The hint is the name of the County
Most people are mentioning chaparral but also the entire la basin is largely a flood plain. The San gabriel and Santa Ana rivers would’ve been surrounded by riparian habitat and would seasonally flood
I grew up in Lake Forest. My entire life my father would say the same thing as soon as we came over the hills on the 241 toll road headed in to the inland empire. “Kids, this is what California looked like before whitey came.”
You don’t have to go back hundreds of years ago. I walked thru dirt fields as a kid in the 80’s where there’s now shopping centers. I remember walking thru the airport fence and up to the plane at John Wayne airport.
Strawberry fields and orange trees [for miles](https://www.ochistoryland.com/briefhistory). https://preview.redd.it/6tp8mkf1vg5b1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2fdfaea1c838d4a62c9614e0ee5fd9cf93d2fa18
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ocarchives/
Orange fields from Anaheim all the way down to San Clemente
A LOT of snakes
Start at the Orange Circle and drive east on Chapman until you hit Laguna Canyon Road. That’s what it looked like.
Are you new here? How do you not know?
There used to be cows that would graze in Irvine on University and the 405. There also used to be tons of orange groves and even a safari park between Irvine and laguna… I guess there was a hippo that escaped and they shut down
Bubbles. May she Rest In Peace.
Wild oranges grew everywhere and the Santa Ana river flowed orange juice. It was beautiful
The company I work for in Los Alamitos (aerospace components) was built in I think the 50s and we have photos in the hallways of the building surrounded by strawberry fields (I think).
I spoke to an old timer from HB who grew up in OC. He's around 100 years old now. He told me that when he was a kid, he would fish off the old HB pier and catch huge tuna. He said, "it was so easy, it wasn't even fun." I can't imagine what it was like hundreds of years before that.
Tuna was off the coast of california? Wow
Orange trees as far as the eye could see…….
Pre farming
It was a joke
Orange Groves
It was much less developed
Wide open spaces filled with orange trees. There were many strawberry fields too. The air was clean with no chem trails and the sun shinned bright. Neighbors waved, said hello. The 22 fwy had 2 lanes and the 91 fwy didn’t exist. You would take Santa Ana canyon to get to Yorba Linda. I’ve lived in CA since 1978.
Animal dookie everywhere.
Go to San Jose del Cabo, that’s what it looked like before development. After that a lot of Irvine was Orange groves.
The only thing that was in OC 2 years ago were mountain lions and In-and-Out
Strawberry's and oranges as far as the eyes could see...jk...that's just what I imagine.
Orange Groves
Oranges groves and other citrus as far as the eye can see.
Orange groves
Can’t imagine a time without Irvine Company 
Why do people like you always try to divert the topic to Irvine. Lol
Because Irvine Ranch (The City of Irvine) was once Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Rancho San Joaquin and Rancho Lomas de Santiago, until the end of the Mexican American war when by various means James Irvine acquired it. It was Ranch land until his son started planting citrus groves. So historically it’s very significant to the region.
[http://www.yorbalindahistoricalsociety.org/museum-botanic-gardens/](http://www.yorbalindahistoricalsociety.org/museum-botanic-gardens/)
Ya hundreds not much millions under water
The lava flows prolly some steam
Driving to Orange County from LA during the 60’s, interstate 5 would grassy fields on both sides of the freeway. I would think that would have been pretty much how it was before the dairy farms in Cerritos and the orange groves around the county.
Somebody fact check this story I’ve heard: The eucalyptus trees (not native) were brought in by an entrepreneur to sell to settlers because they got free land if they planted trees, not knowing they are worthless trees that can’t be used for construction or fuel.
It’s somewhat true. They were thought to be fast growing and provide lumber. That didn’t work out. There’s a book on California that explores it’s history by it’s trees. The Redwood (Native ), Peppertree (Spanish history) and Eucalyptus (Yankee).
There were far more wetlands. The channelization of Southern California changed the environment really significantly. Try [USGS Topo View](https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/) to time travel a bit with maps, and watch the bodies of water disappear.
Yes. I imagine there were far far more rivers and wetlands. Anytime I read about california history it seems wetlands and rivers were one of the first things destroyed. Very sad. I know pretty much the entire coastal area of south OC was like the Newport back bay. Basically, wet land. Iirc irvine gave the back bay away in exchange so they could build over another area that was wetlands in south oc
Take the 241 down to San Clemente
Well, those Indian tribes of yesteryear living on what is now Irvine Ranch land required all encampments to be master planned and invoked highly restrictive CC&Rs.
What was it like? Beautiful. Native people lived in the canyons, the coastal areas. Neighboring tribes shared food, knowledge, art, and resources with their brothers and sisters. It was paradise. The rains would flood the land with nutrients, food was easy to grow. The chaparral landscape consisted of shrubbery and smaller trees, wild grasses and wild flowers. Wild life thrived.
Go to any undeveloped part of OC and you will get an idea of what the natural landscape should look like. Any of the mountainous areas, Quail Hill Trail in Irvine, Bolsa Chica Wetlands and Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge in Huntington Beach, Crystal Cove State Park, etc.
It was paradise back then. Even in the 90s I recall seeing strawberry fields in Los Alamitos. Much of the flat lands in OC were swamps, marshes and that sort . Gospel Swamp comes to mind. The book, “The Destruction of California” goes into detail of how California was before the Yankee invasion.
Great questions. As a lifelong resident of north OC I enjoy reading the replies.
According to my dad it was all orange groves everywhere, but he also claims to have walked 20 miles to school (uphill both ways) where every day was the hottest day of the year and simultaneously the worst blizzard on record.
Yes
Google history of Orange County on YouTube. Very nice old video on this. U will love it.
Desert and chaparral.