A little OC adventuring... - 4/11/2014

To finish out Spring Break we decided to head down to Orange County to hit a few sites.

 Our first stop was Old Santa Ana (CHL 204).  This is another stop on the Portola Expedition in 1769.

 One of the members of the expedition, Jose Antonio Yorba, returned here to live at Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana.  The Santa Ana River used to flow here and the El Camino Real path was along here as well.

 Next we drove a few minutes to the North Gate of Anaheim (CHL 112).  When Anaheim was first planted they needed to guard the city from wild cattle, so they constructed walls and used clumps of trees as barriers.

 

They also installed gates at the north, west, south and east-- the north gate acted as the main entrance to the colony as it was on the highway to Los Angeles. Anaheim was founded in 1857 by a group 50 families of German immigrants.

 Which leads us to the next site... the Pioneer House of the Mother Colony (CHL 201). 

This home was built by Anaheim's founder George Hanson.  The name of the house is after the "Mother Colony" or the group of German's who left San Francisco to found a grape-growing colony in Southern Californa.

 

They even have grape plants in front of the house as an homage to the reason for the founding of the town.

Their vineyards grew to be the largest in all of California.  Sadly, the grapes were destroyed by disease in 1885, but they began producing oranges which took beautifully (eventually leading to the name Orange County).

 

This house is also important for literary reasons and it even has a friends of the library plaque outside.  Polish author and Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of Quo Vadis, briefly lived in this home when he was in Anaheim during the 1870's.

No visit to Orange County would be complete for our family without stopping at one of our favorite non-historical landmarks, Disneyland! 

 We spent the rest of the afternoon going on an egg hunt, seeing the Easter Bunny, and catching up with some of our favorite characters.

 All-in-all a short foray into Orange County, but a really fun day!