In 1850, the new state of California was divided into 27 different counties. What is now Orange County was simply the southern tip of Los Angeles County. On June 4, 1889, residents of the southernmost tip of Los Angeles County went to the polls and voted to form their own county. It was the culmination of two decades of struggles, setbacks and political maneuvers everywhere.
Guinn, a former school teacher from Anaheim, was active in some of the first efforts to create a separate Orange County. The first two attempts failed, but the last one succeeded, and in 1893, Riverside County was divided from San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Southern Orange County has relatively underdeveloped areas with newer subdivisions and high-tech industries. Northern Orange County is known for its theme parks and has the best tourist infrastructure in the county.
Its failure paved the way for a nearly 20-year struggle — profusely narrated here by Phil Brigandi, former Orange County Archivist — to create a new county. Originally from the utopian agricultural colony of Anaheim and headed by the city's mayor, Max Strobel, the proposal would have created a county that would include the current Whittier, Norwalk and Downey, as well as the communities of today's Orange County. Orange is the only New York County located between two rivers, the Hudson in the east and the Delaware in the west. But until 1889, the two counties were one, and Los Angeles County extended southward to present-day San Clemente.
Located just 40 miles from Manhattan, Orange County is one of the most attractive areas in the New York metropolitan area. Orange County encompasses the coast of Southern California, located south of Los Angeles County, north of San Diego County and west of Riverside County. When California was first divided into counties in 1850, what is now Orange County was simply part of Los Angeles County. With the formation in 1907 of Imperial County from the eastern half of San Diego County, the current list of counties in Southern California was completed.
In addition to not being from Los Angeles, he was hoping to get a new county for his part of the county, so helping to create Orange County would set a good precedent. The first carbon-dated human settlement in North America, more than 12,500 years old, is in Orange County. The origins of Orange County can be traced back to an 1869 plan to create an Anaheim County from the rural south of Los Angeles County. Downtown Orange County includes the oldest and most densely populated sections of the county and is a paradise for those seeking Victorian architecture, as well as ethnic enclaves for Latinos and Vietnamese.
