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A Rich Land
For many years, the City of Orange was in the heart of one of the richest agricultural areas in California. Before residential and commercial development overwhelmed the area, Orange County was a major producer of citrus crops, walnuts, avocados, apricots, lima beans, sugar beets, celery, tomatoes, and other crops. The first important cash crop in Orange was raisin grapes. But in 1886-87 a mysterious disease (later identified as a phylloxera) swept through the vineyards, decimating the grape industry. Oranges, apricots, and walnuts then became the principal local crops, and after 1900, citrus -- especially Valencia oranges -- began to dominate the area.
All of these crops were dependent on four things: soil and climate, irrigation water, a labor source for harvesting and packing, and outside markets. Through trial and error, farmers in the late 19th Century determined what crops did best in the local area. Bananas and pineapples were failures; apples and celery succeeded for a time, then faded. Irrigation water came originally through a series of canals from the Santa Ana River and the Santiago Creek. Later more and more wells were put down on local ranches. The Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company, founded in Orange in 1877 as a cooperative stock company, was the largest of the local water companies, serving over 18,000 acres at its peak. Expanding agriculture created more and more jobs, attracting farm workers to the area. Harvest time meant even more work, with migrant laborers coming in from throughout the Western United States. The workers were a mix of races -- local ranchers and their families, first Chinese, and then Japanese and Filipino workers, and both local and migrant Mexican-American workers all found employment in the area.
But without access to outside markets, much of the crop would have been left to rot. Small amounts of produce could be hauled by wagon to Los Angeles, or shipped by boat to San Francisco, but it was only after the arrival of the Southern Pacific railroad in 1877 that growers could ship large amounts of produce to outside markets. Dried fruit, such as raisins and apricots, could now be shipped across the country and even to Europe, but it took time to develop the techniques to ship oranges and other fresh fruit over long distances. Once it was firmly in place in Orange, agriculture provided the backbone of the local economy on into the 1950s. Apricots and walnuts had all but faded away by 1930 as more and more ranchers went to citrus. Only in later years were avocados able to make some small inroads in the local area. Citrus was king in Orange, and it enjoyed a long and prosperous reign.
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