The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

As context for my Fullerton history project, I like to read books about California history more broadly. I’m currently reading my way through Kevin Starr’s epic series “Americans and the California Dream.” I’ve just finished reading book three, entitled Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s.

“This is a book about design, construction, and identity, whether in aqueducts, architecture, gardens, city plans, transportation systems, hotels, studio sets, symphony orchestras, or hydroelectric grids,” Starr writes. “I am concerned with the process through which Americans in Southern California materialized or acted out in material forms their individual and collective aspirations.”

I present here a book report on some of the things I learned from Material Dreams. Throughout, I try to connect the main topics to local (Fullerton) history. No town exists in isolation, and the growth of Fullerton is very much connected to the growth of Southern California as a whole.

Water for Profit and Growth

Starr begins by discussing the large-scale water projects that made the astonishing material growth of Southern California possible.

Many of these projects in the early 20th century were tied up with real estate speculation and greed. An early example of this is Imperial Valley.

In 1901, George Chaffey (founder of the town of Ontario), Charles Robinson Rockwood, and other investors created the California Development Company and devised a clever way of profiting off of public resources (water and land). They diverted water from the Colorado River, then helped settlers obtain free or nearly free public land courtesy of the Homestead Act and the Desert Land Act. Those settlers then paid the Development Company for water for their farms and towns. When they could not pay, the company often got the land.

“The Imperial scheme represented a massive use of public resources for private profit,” Starr writes.

Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis was in on the scheme, using his paper to advocate for Imperial Valley irrigation projects that would benefit his own sprawling land-holdings in California and Mexico.

Then, in 1905, an ill-advised cut by the development company into the Colorado River caused water to overrun a dam which caused millions of metric tons of water to run westward, creating the Salton Sea. It was a natural disaster facilitated by greed and arrogance.

Like the Imperial Valley scheme, the creation of the LA Aqueduct was a tale of greed and deception that decimated the livelihood of Owens Valley farmers in eastern California.

In the early 20th century, former LA mayor/real estate speculator Fred Eaton was sent by a group of LA oligarchs to buy up options on critical land sites in the Owens Valley for later resale to Los Angeles.

“The former mayor–to his own great profit–was operating on behalf of a Los Angeles government,” Starr writes. “Eaton acquired options on Owens Valley property which he sold to Los Angeles for $450,000. He made another $100,000 on commission…Rarely has public service been so richly rewarded.”

Times owner Otis was part of a syndicate of LA oligarchs, the San Fernando Mission Land Company, whose members included Henry Huntington of the Pacific Electric Railroad, E.H. Harriman of the Southern Pacific, and Joseph Sartori of Security Trust and Savines, which was quietly buying up and in the San Fernando Valley which would soar in value once water arrived.

“The water destiny of Los Angeles was unfolding as a conspiracy in which public ambition and private self-interest mingled murkily,” Starr writes.

The newspapers and powerful elites were pushing for a water project that would not only benefit Los Angeles, but would make them all very wealthy. Helped along by articles and editorials from the Times, LA voters passed a $1.5 million bond measure to build the Aqueduct, which was the creation of City water engineer William Mulholland. 

“Like a vampire, Los Angeles had affixed itself to the primal source point for the Owens River and the valley it watered,” Starr writes.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed in 1913. “There it is. Take it,” Mulholland said upon its opening, as water rushed to irrigate both Los Angeles and the farmlands of the San Fernando Valley, now worth millions.

This water facilitated fantastic growth and even more fantastic profits for some. While the Los Angeles Aqueduct did not bring water to Fullerton (That would come later from the Colorado River Aqueduct), its place in the story of water in Southern California is a good example of the collusion of the very wealthy and government officials operating out of pure greed or, as they might put it, “enlightened self-interest.”

In 1928, a Metropolitan Water District was formed to administer the Colorado River project. That same year saw the tragic St. Francis Dam disaster, which killed over 400 people, and tarnished the legacy of William Mulholland.

The 1920s Real Estate Boom

Upon the foundation of its newfound water source, Los Angeles and its surrounding communities experienced a building boom in the 1920s.

“Water made imperial Los Angeles possible, but it was real estate development…within the decade of the 1920s [which] propelled greater Los Angeles past the million mark, making it the fifth largest city in the United States,” Starr writes.

Between 1920 and 1930 two million Americans migrated to California.

Although the original town of Los Angeles was founded by a multi-racial group in 1781 as an outpost of the Spanish Empire, by 1920, it was a majority white city.

In 1926, “a census of 1.3 million…revealed 45,000 Hispanics, 33,000 Blacks, and 30,000 Asians. Everyone else, 9 tenths of the people, was of European descent,” Starr writes.

Throughout the 1920s, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, racial discrimination was widespread.

“The Asiatic Exclusion League of California, having secured legislation in 1913 outlawing the ownership of land in California by Japanese,” Starr writes. “Congress cut off immigration from Asia in 1924.”

While Asian-Americans declined in the 1920s, the Mexican American and Black populations increased. However, non-whites were excluded from many neighborhoods through racially restrictive housing covenants and “red-lining.”

As part of the greater LA area, Fullerton also experienced this housing and construction boom in the 1920s. Many of the first large subdivisions, spreading outward from downtown, were built in the 1920s. Most of these, too, had racially restrictive housing covenants.

How Cars Supplanted Public Transit in Southern California

In the early 20th century, Southern California boasted one of the largest inter-urban passenger rail systems in the world–The Pacific Electric Railway Company, whose “Red Cars” provided a transportation option for the masses.

For a while, the Red Cars and automobiles coexisted, but beginning in the 1920s, the automobile began to supplant the train as LA’s preferred mode of transit.

“The very time other American and European cities were building subways and elevateds to bring mass transit into and out of the central city above or below street traffic, Los Angeles was rejecting such alternatives in the belief that Los Angeles County would peak with 100,000 automobiles by 1919,” Starr writes. “By 1924 there were four times that number.”

While cities like New York built upward on a foundation of subways, Los Angeles increasingly built out on a foundation of roads and cars.

By the 1930s, streetcar usage was rapidly declining.

Los Angeles, Bruce Bliven observed in 1927, “is now a completely motorized civilization. Nowhere else in the world have human beings so thoroughly adapted themselves to the automobile…Any Angeleno without his automobile is marooned, like a cowboy without his horse.”

And so Los Angeles county expanded outward in a decentralized fashion. By the end of the 1920s, Los Angeles encompassed 450 square miles.

Beginning in 1917, the “Red Cars” came through Fullerton as part of the La Habra-Fullerton-Yorba Linda line. There was a Pacific Electric depot downtown. With a decline in ridership, the Pacific Electric line to Fullerton was abandoned in 1938. The old depot is now Hopscotch bar/restaurant.

Oil!

Although it’s not so obvious today, in the 1920s, Southern California was a major oil-producing region.

The oil boom of the 1920s actually began in Orange County, at Huntington Beach.

“Bathers swam or lazed on the sand against a forest line of derricks that crowded the beach itself,” Starr writes.

The area of Signal Hill “became a Dantesque landscape of flares and shadows and moving machinery.”

And just as water and real estate were making some rich, oil was producing millionaires like George Franklin Getty whose wells covered property at Santa Fe Springs between Los Angeles and Anaheim.

“In 1924 oil surpassed agriculture as the leading industry of the State,” Starr writes. “The Los Angeles basin that year alone produced 230 million barrels of crude oil and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas.”

Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! describes “the transformation of Paradise (Long Beach) from a quiet little seaside village where retired Iowa farmers pitched horseshoes into a bustling boom town porcupined with derricks.”

Fullerton and surrounding environs like Brea got in on the oil boom, with hundreds of derricks once dotting the landscape north of town.

The Film Industry

By 1920, filmmaking had become Los Angeles’ biggest industry. 

Directors like Cecil B. De Mille were creating cinematic spectacles that captivated the imagination of the United States.

The film industry also inspired the creation of a new kind of spectacular public place–the movie palace.

A pioneer of this was Sidney Grauman, who set about to create on Broadway in Los Angeles the movie equivalent of Broadway in New York.

Movie palaces used murals, statues, decorative carvings, carpets and furnishings to create “a cathedral of color and fantasy with jazz as liturgical music.”

“All great cities must have their places of worship,” Starr writes.

Although it was a ways away from Hollywood or Broadway, Fullerton’s own Fox Theater was designed by the same architects who designed Grauman’s Egyptian and Chinese movie palaces in Los Angeles.

Fullerton also was home to Lois Weber, the first major female Hollywood Director.

Religious Life

The religious tradition which most characterized Los Angeles in the 1920s was Protestant Christianity, although there were also notable Catholic and Jewish communities. 

Starr focuses on two larger-than-life religious figures of 1920s Southern California, who represented two different strains of popular Christianity at the time–Bob Schuler and Aimee Semple McPherson.

“Fierce, patriarchal, bigoted, Bob Schuler personified the Bible Belt in all its relish for hellfire and damnation,” Starr writes. “Schuler hated Jews, Catholics, movies, evolution, jazz, and dancing.” He also spoke favorably of the Ku Klux Klan, which was enjoying a major resurgence in the 1920s.

Shuler amassed a congregation of 42,000, and broadcast his messages on a radio station, KGEF. The strain of Christianity he represented might be called Fundamentalist or even Christian Nationalist.

“Los Angeles,” Shuler argued, “is the only Anglo-Saxon city of a million population left in America. It is the only such city that is not dominated by foreigners. It remains in a class to itself as the one city of the nation in which the white, American, Christian idealism still predominates.”

Aimee Semple McPherson, by contrast, preached a more welcoming message that might be equated with what is called the Prosperity Gospel today.

“McPherson loved automobiles as well as Jesus Christ–big, open touring cars which she could emblazon with evangelistic slogans,” Starr writes. She had the $1.5 million Angelus Temple by Echo Park, and a radio station (KFSG).

McPherson’s ministry was cut short by a fake kidnapping and sex scandal in 1926.

I’m not sure to what extent Shuler and McPherson’s radio programs influenced Fullerton in the 1920s, but the McPherson scandals were headline stories in the Fullerton News-Tribune.

Fullerton was, certainly, a majority Protestant town in the 1920s, with several large churches in the downtown area.

Architecture in Southern California

Starr writes about how architecture styles of the 1920s materialized a sense of place for southern Californians which “expressed itself architecturally in three directions: Craftsman Bungalow, Mediterranean, and the various evolutions of Spanish Revival.”

“Spanish Revival struck the most pervasive chord of popular acceptance,” Starr writes. “By the 1930s, California Spanish, as it came to be known, had emerged as Southern California’s most popular design for living. Some communities, in fact–Santa Barbara, Ojai, Palos Verdes, San Clemente, Rancho Santa Fe–went so far as to declare other styles illegal.”

Spanish Revival, with its red-tiled roofs and white walls “represented a romantic grafting of a largely imaginary past onto the physical fabric of the American present.”

One major proponent of this style was architect Myron Hunt who, between 1910 and 1929 completed some 500 projects in Southern California.

Some of Fullerton’s most iconic downtown buildings were built in the 1920s and 1930s in the Mission Revival style, including the Fox Theater, the California Hotel (now the Villa del Sol), the High School Auditorium, the Santa Fe Train Depot, the Fullerton Post Office, Fullerton College, and the Fullerton Hospital. The first Fullerton City Hall (built around 1940, now the Police Station) was also Mission Revival Style.

Literary Dreams of Southern California

Another way people were materializing their dreams in Southern California was through books.

A notable example was L. Frank Baum, author of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Baum and his family moved from Chicago to Hollywood in 1910, and every Oz book except the first was written in Southern California.

“The essential storyline of the first Oz book functions as a prophetic probe into the inner imaginative texture of the mass migration of midwesterners to Oz/Southern California and the Emerald City of Los Angeles down through the 1920s,” Starr writes. “Los Angeles, in other words, was Oz come true; Southern California as a whole was Baum’s Oz dream materialized.”

Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, in true southern California style, made his fortune off books and real estate, founding the subdivision of Tarzana.

Literary dreams manifested themselves through book stores like Vroman’s in Pasadena and Dawson’s in downtown Los Angeles, and collections like that of Henry Huntington.

Los Angeles in the 1920s had its circles of booksellers, collectors, and intellectuals like Jacob Israel Zeitlin, Carey McWilliams, Herbert Klein, Phil Townsend Hanna, Jose Rodriguez, Louis Adamic, and Merle Armitage.

Local publishers popped up like Jake Zeitlin’s Primavera Press, Fine Arts Press of Santa Ana, and The Arroyo Press–many of which focused on books about California.

Books were important to Fullertonians in the 1920s, as evidenced by its beautiful Carnegie Library (now the Fullerton Museum Center).

Conclusion

“By 1930 Southern California stood materialized as a metropolitan and suburban region, and Los Angeles, its population standing at 1.2 million, had become the dominant American city west of Chicago and a maritime center on the Pacific Rim,” Starr writes.

This process of dreams becoming material reality was made possible by massive water projects, the greed of real estate speculators, the designs of architects, and more.

According to author Bruce Bliven, Southern California in the 1920s “offers a melting-pot in which the civilization of the future may be seen, bubbling darkly up in a foreshadowing brew.”

All of the bubbling prosperity of the 1920s would be put to the test in the 1930s. Stay tuned for my upcoming report on the next book in Kevin Starr’s series: Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

In my quest to better understand the larger context of my local (Fullerton) history project, I like to read books about California history more broadly, and then write book reports on what I learn.

I’ve just finished reading a great book called We are the Land: a History of Native California by Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr. which gives a history of California from the perspective of its original inhabitants.

Too often California’s Indigenous People are given short shrift in the histories we are taught about the Golden State. Each semester, for example, I ask my students if anyone knows the name of the local tribe–those people who first inhabited north Orange County and Los Angeles. Rarely does anyone know about the Kizh (or as they are sometimes called, Tongva or Gabrieleno) tribe.

“Despite the long and rich history of Indigenous People in California, historians, anthropologists, and everyday people disconnected California Indian history from California history,” Akins and Bauer write. “California Indians often disappear from those histories after the demographic catastrophe of the California Gold Rush, in which the California Indians declined from about 150,000 to 30,000. In the twentieth century, many people believed California Indians vanished.”

We Are the Land seeks to correct the historical erasure of California’s Indigenous People, and to show the remarkable stories of how they survived waves of settler-colonialism and remain today.

“Beginning in the 1760s, Spaniards, Russians, Mexicans, and especially Americans attempted to control California and divorce Indigenous People from the land. All four colonial nations sponsored policies that uprooted Indigenous People and communities from the lands on which they were created, and all four deployed violence, in the form of slavery, genocide, and an administrative state bent on eliminating California Indian people,” Akins and Bauer write. “Yet California Indian people, nations, and lands remain. California Indians have built and rebuilt communities, developed practices to maintain ties with the land, and remade policies intended to separate them from their homes. At times, California Indians hid to survive, but they never left.”

Despite the injustices they suffered, it is important also to see California’s Indigenous People not just as victims, but as major players, who successfully resisted conquest and genocide, and creatively maintained their culture to today.

The various nations who invaded and claimed California as their own (Spain, Mexico, the United States), often saw the land and its resources as commodities to exploit for profit. By contrast, Indigenous People had both a material and a spiritual connection to the land.

For the Kizh/Tongva (also called Gabrielino or Gabrieleno), the lands we now call north Orange County and Los Angeles were created by their god Nocuma. The world originated at Povuu’nga, now located on the CSU Long Beach campus.

“The Tongva people called the region Tovaangar,” Akins and Bauer write. “Across the region were more than 100 villages, mostly adjacent to rivers and creeks. Juyubit, one of the largest villages, was located in Buena Park. Hotuukgna, along the Santa Ana river near present day Yorba Linda, was another. Povuu’nga, where CSU Long Beach campus is today, is an important site owing to its connection to the creation stories. Yaanga, the largest Tonngva villate, sat just above the flood plain of the LA River, south of Olvera St.

Before colonization, California was one of the most populous and diverse regions in what is now the United States. Between 300,000 and one million people speaking over 100 distinct languages inhabited the coasts, forests, deserts, and mountains of California.

“Creation stories described the people’s relationship with the land, and situated people in specific places,” Akins and Bauer write.

Indigenous people worked with the land to ensure its productivity, developed irrigation systems, planted crops, hunted game like deer, elk, sheep, and sea mammals.

Tribes had unique religions that involved complex ceremonies and rituals. Stories, like creation stories, were passed down orally for generations.

Tribes engaged in extensive trade throughout the southwest.

“California looked like the sky, as many villages as stars, organized into constellations,” Akins and Bauer write.

Starting in the 1540s, European explorers like Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Sebastian Vizcaino came into contact with California’s Indigenous Peoples.

Some early histories present these first encounters as that of a “primitive” society acting in amazement and fear at the arrival of an “advanced” society. But this is likely not the case.

“Rather than fearing Spanish and English sailors, Indigenous People boarded their own seagoing vessels and went out to greet the newcomers,” Akins and Bauer write. “Indigenous People possessed a long history of trading with oceangoing vessels. Tongvas and Chumash, for instance, carried on maritime trade between the islands and the mainland.”

In fact, it was indigenous knowledge that allowed Europeans explorers to navigate the coast and begin mapping its terrain.

It is important to see these Europeans and Indigenous people as equals–each possessing valuable knowledge, technology, and culture worth sharing.

Unfortunately, the colonizers did not see Indigenous People as their equals, and saw their lands and resources as available for the taking.

“In 1513, the Spanish crown mandated that all explorers read the Requerimiento to the Indigenous People of the Americas, informing them that they were subjects of the Spanish crown,” Akins and Bauer write. “Across North America, the Spanish used the Requerimiento to justify colonization.”

Rather than bringing an “advanced” civilization to a “primitive” people, what European colonizers ultimately brought was disease and death.

In 1769, the Spanish empire began colonizing California in a systematic way, creating missions, presidios (forts), and pueblos (towns) along the California coast.

All of these proved destructive to Indigenous communities. Between 1769 and 1800 the number of Indigenous People on the California coast declined by nearly 50 percent due to disease and mistreatment.

“Spanish settler colonial policies attempted to separate Indigenous Peoples from the land and each other and, in doing so, altered California’s social and ecological makeup,” Akins and Bauer write. “Spanish missionaries believed in ‘reducing’ Indigenous People from their allegedly ‘wild and primitive’ state to what the Spaniards considered more ‘civilized’ missions. There, Indigenous People encountered new animals, germs, and social practices.”

Spanish missionaries like the famous Father Junipero Serra sought to stamp out native religions and “Christianize” the Indigenous people.

And while Spanish colonialism was highly destructive, Indigenous people resisted in many ways. In 1775, for example, Kumeyaay and Tipais people had had enough. They organized and carried out a successful revolt, in which they killed priests and soldiers and burned Mission San Diego to the ground.

When Spanish domesticated livestock depleted the native plants that Indigenous people lived on, they responded by killing livestock.

In 1785, there was another attempted revolt at Mission San Gabriel, led by a Kizh woman named Toypurina and a man named Nicolas Jose. Unfortunately, this one was foiled, but the transcripts of the trial that followed show remarkable and courageous resistance to colonization.

Some Indigenous people survived Spanish colonization by avoiding the missions altogether, or by running away.

Life in the missions was pretty brutal, a sort of west coast slavery. Indigenous People who “misbehaved” were whipped, placed in stocks, or locked up. If a baptized Indian tried to run away, they were pursued, brought back, and publicly flogged.

When an Indigenous Person was baptized, they were often given a new Spanish name–a way of erasing cultural identity.

Despite this, Native cultural practices persisted and were even sometimes incorporated into Mission Christianity.

“Native artists worked within and modified Catholic and Indigenous traditions,” Akins and Bauer write. “At Mission Santa Ines, a Chumash artist painted a portrait of Saint Raphael, holding a fish in one arm, a staff in the other, with enormous wings, blending Chumash and Catholic symbols.”

Native healers still used the old ceremonies and Indigenous people maintained ties with the land and with family outside the missions. For example, Missions that could not support indigenous people year round allowed them to return to their own towns for part of the year.

Indigenous people also assumed leadership roles within the missions, such as alcaldes.

“Indigenous people gravitated to ‘places of refuge’ where they could collect traditional foods, share stories, dance, and carry out old practices while simultaneously integrating new ones,” Akins and Bauer write. “In the interior, Indigenous People harbored those who escaped the missions…Chumash leaders refused to return runaways and fought Spanish soldiers over the fate of their newly returned people.”

In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and so California became a part of the newly formed Republic of Mexico. Many indigenous people found work on the large cattle ranchos that were created by Mexican land grants.

In 1824, a large and well-coordinated revolt occurred across the three missions in the heart of Chumash country. In 1826, California governor Jose Maria Echeandia gave a partial emancipation proclamation, allowing Indigenous People to petition for their freedom.

In 1834, the missions were “secularized” and their vast land holdings were made open for settlement. Although secularization was envisioned, at least by some, to return mission lands to Indigenous Peoples, this rarely happened.

Between 1846 and 1848, the United States waged an expansionist war of conquest against the Republic of Mexico, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and Mexico ceding half of its territory to the United States. California became part of the U.S.A. In 1849, the California Gold Rush brought waves of new settlers, and new perils for Indigenous People.

“While Spanish and Mexican colonists used Indigenous People as laborers, most Americans adhered to the settler colonial ‘logic of elimination,’ in which Indigenous People must disappear,” Akins and Bauer write. “According to most estimates, before the Gold Rush, 150,000 Native Peoples lived within the state’s boundaries; only 30,000 survived the following maelstrom. Americans caused the demographic catastrophe through genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the enslavement of Indigenous People.”

American settlers weren’t just exploiters of labor–they were straight up killers.

“Between 1850 and 1851, California politicians created what historian Benjamin Madley calls a ‘killing machine,’” Akins and Bauer write. “The governor authorized citizens to form compulsory and volunteer militias to hunt down and kill Indigenous People.”

These roving death squads were paid with government funds.

“Between 1846 and 1873, vigilantes, militias, the state of California and the United States initiated hundreds of campaigns that killed between 9,492 and 16,094 California Indians,” Akins and Bauer write.

Some attacks were large scale massacres like on Bloody Island, in Clear Lake, the site of the largest massacre in US history during which the US Army murdered as many as 800 Pomos.

Meanwhile, Native Californians were denied legal rights. Laws were passed preventing them from voting, testifying against whites, serving on juries,  working as lawyers, and owning guns.

Those who survived the American genocide faced additional laws that exploited them for their labor, such as the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which created conditions for indentured servitude for thousands.

Shortly after California statehood, the US government negotiated 18 treaties with various tribes. However, these were not ratified by the Senate, and were held under secrecy for decades.

And yet, Indigenous people continued to survive and resist.

Antonio Garra, a Cupeno leader, attempted to create a pan-Indian alliance in Southern California to oppose the American invaders.

California Indians continued to work on ranches, in cities, and helped build infrastructure like railroads.

“California Indians used the relationships connecting land, labor, and the law to carve out spaces to preserve sovereignty and culture throughout the state,” Akins and Bauer write.

Meanwhile, non-Indian reformers sought to improve conditions for Indigenous people, often resulting in policies that hurt them, like breaking up tribally-held land in favor of individual allotment of land (the Dawes Act).

President Ulysses S. Grant established some California reservations by executive order.

Meanwhile, state agencies and private companies constructed dams across California, often resulting in the flooding of Indigenous lands.

As the 19th century came to a close, the recorded Indian population had fallen to its lowest point, just below 25,000 in 1900.

When the 18 unratified treaties were published in 1905, money was appropriated to purchase land for Indian lands, called rancherias.

“In the first three decades of the twentieth century, California Indians created economic and political relationships with Americans to secure their lands and advance programs of self-determination,” Akins and Bauer write. “Organizations such as the Mission Indian Federation, founded by and for California Indians, emerged as tools to claim land and sovereignty.”

Yet tribes throughout the United States, including California faced further attempts at erasing their identities through Indian boarding schools.

“Indian Boarding Schools, like Perris/Sherman (1892-present) followed an assimilationist policy, to ‘kill the Indian to save the man,” Akins and Bauer write. “School officials placed great attention on eradicating aspects of Indian culture, from the way students dressed to the language they spoke to the traditions and practices they treasured.”

Despite the assimilationist intent of the boarding schools, they also were “fertile sites of growth, where powerful intertribal identities and lifelong relationships formed.”

In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all Indians born in the US.

The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act outlined a process for restoring some lost tribal land, and for drafting tribal constitutions and creating tribal governments.

In the late 1950s, Cahuillas Jane Penn and Katherine Siva Saubel worked with anthropologist Lowell Bean and in 1964 they founded the Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation in Banning to preserve Cahuilla culture.

Cahuilla Rupert Costo and his wife founded the American Indian Historical Society in San Francisco–in an effort to improve California history curriculum, “including Indians at all stages of California history to counter the images of lazy, immoral, dirty, and disappearing Indians, which the emphasis on the missions reinforced.”

Indian centers throughout the state hosted monthly powwows and meetings of intertribal organizations.

The California Indian Education Association (CIEA), helped promote the creation of Native American studies programs at colleges and universities, like the ones that were eventually created at Berkeley, CSU Long Beach, Sacramento State, UCLA, and UC Davis.

California Indian Legal Services and the Native American Rights Fund fought for the rights and sovereignty of tribes.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Indigenous Activist groups engaged in notable actions like the occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969.

Ojibwe Dennis Banks was an early leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

In 1972, more than 69,000 Indians received payments of less than $700 each–$29 million for over 64,000,000 acres, or 45 cents per acre for lands lost because of the 18 unratified treaties. The money was hardly equivalent to the loss.

Economic Advancement for Rural Tribal Habitats (EARTH) formed in 1978 “to acquire federal and state money to buy land, repair housing, and build new homes and communities centers in Northern California rancherias.”

That same year (1978), the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) created new guidelines for federal recognition of tribes.

Unfortunately, these guidelines made federal recognition more difficult, Native groups petitioning for recognition had to “establish a substantially continuous tribal existence and [to] have functioned as autonomous entities throughout history until the present.” 

Many tribes found it difficult to show continuity because for decades federal and state governments had made it difficult to survive.

“In California, many Indigenous people hid their tribal identities in order to survive the genocide of the 19th century,” Akins and Bauer write.

For example, the local Kizh/Tongva tribe is still not federally recognized.

In the 1980s, some California tribes found a new source of economic advancement–opening casinos.

The Cabazon and Morongo Reservations in southern California were the first to gain permission to open gaming centers.

In 1988, President Regan signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allowed gaming, with some limits and rules.

California voters passed Prop 1A, which allowed gaming on all federally recognized Indian lands.

Revenues from Indian gaming pays for youth programs and social services, provides jobs, improves infrastructure, allows tribes to purchase additional land, and creates centers for more robust cultural preservation.

For example The Agua Caliente Tribe built a 100,000 square foot cultural museum, “which hosts academic presentations and language classes and collects Cahuilla artifacts.”

Despite all that California’s Indigenous people have suffered, they survived and continue to assert their sovereignty and culture.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

“Our inheritance is turned to strangers.”

–Lamentations 5:2

In my desire to understand the larger context of local history, I’ve just read a book entitled The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California 1850-1880 by Robert Glass Cleland. The book tells the story of how many of the large Spanish/Mexican cattle ranches in California passed out of the hands of the Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians) and into the hands of American settlers. Below is a book report on what I learned.

When Spain began colonizing California in 1769, they set up three main types of settlements: missions, presidios (military forts), and pueblos (towns). 

In the Los Angeles area, there was Mission San Gabriel, and the pueblo of Los Angeles.

In 1784, Governor Pedro Fages began issuing the first private land grants, mostly to former soldiers like Juan Jose Dominguez, Manuel Nieto, Jose Maria Verdugo, Jose Bartolome Tapia, Jose Antonio Yorba, Miguel Pico, and Antonio Maria Lugo.

The Nieto grant, perhaps the largest in southern California, included nearly 300,000 acres. By the time he died in 1804, his huge land and cattle holdings made him the richest man in California.

“A glance at a modern map of the Los Angeles basin will show to what an enormous extent the conversion of the original Fages concessions into cities, towns, factories, oil fields, and farming communities entered into the making of the Southern California of today,” Cleland writes.

After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, the new Republic passed the Colonization Act of 1824, which increased the number of land grants. The Secularization Act of 1833 transferred the vast land holdings of the missions into private hands.

“The new land policy was so liberal that California governors issued fully seven hundred concessions to private claimants between the Secularization Act of 1833 and the American occupation 13 years later,” Cleland writes.

After the secularization of the missions, many California Indians went to work on the large cattle ranches, as vaqueros.

The rancheros sold their cattle hides and tallow to foreign traders, as portrayed in Richard Henry Dana’s book Two Years Before the Mast. Between 1845 and 46, the region exported 80,000 hides and 1.5 million pounds of tallow (used mainly for candles).

The standard currency of the region was the cattle hide, sometimes called the “Caifornia bank note.”

Social life on the ranchos included music, dancing, fiestas, rodeos, and high stakes horse racing.

Although life was somewhat idyllic, the political scene in California was not exactly stable. A succession of revolutions saw the government change hands nearly once a year between 1831 and 1841.

In 1846, the United States went to war with Mexico, an expansionist war waged in the name of “Manifest Destiny.” The war ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded fully half of its country to the United States, including California.

The Treaty promised Spanish/Mexican landowners that their property rights would be respected and that the U.S. government would recognize “legitimate titles to every description of property, personal and real, existing in the ceded territories.”

That was the plan, at least. But it didn’t exactly work out that way. 

Congress passed the Land Act of 1851, which created a 3-member Board of Land Commissioners whose job it was to determine the validity of existing grants. This proved disastrous to many owners of Spanish/Mexican land grants.

“Compliance with the Board’s instructions put the landowners to enormous trouble and expense and placed the Spanish-Californians, especially, at serious disadvantage,” Cleland writes. “Boundaries recognized by custom and tradition for a generation were arbitrarily challenged by the government…In the face of such conditions the validation of even the most perfect title presented serious difficulties, frequently involved ruinous expense, and often entailed years of uncertainty and delay.”

Many landowners lost their lands trying to defend their grants.

“One out of every ten bona fide landowners of Los Angeles County was reduced to bankruptcy by the federal land policy, and at least forty percent of the land legitimately owned under Mexican grants was alienated to meet the costs of complying with the Act of 1851,” Cleland writes.

The promise of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was severely undermined by the Land Act of 1851.

“If the history of Mexican grants of California is ever written,” said Henry George in 1871, “it will be a history of greed, of perjury, or corruption, of spoliation and high-handed robbery, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel.”

Adding insult to injury, the Gold Rush of 1849 brought a chaotic wave of new settlers into California, who often squatted on land that was not theirs.

But the Gold Rush wasn’t all bad for southern California rancheros. Hungry miners created an increased demand for beef, and this led to a boom in beef prices.

After this boom, however, came a serious bust as natural disasters in the 1860s wrought desolation upon the southern ranches.

First came a massive flood in 1861 “which drowned thousands of head of cattle and destroyed possibly a fourth of the state’s taxable wealth.” The floods also destroyed whole communities, such as Agna Mansa and Placita along the Santa Ana river.

After the flood came the drought.

“The great flood of 1861-62 was followed by two years of unparalleled drought. Almost no rain fell during the ensuing fall or winter; and by Spring, cattle on many of the southern ranges were beginning to be in desperate straits,” Cleland writes. “Cattle died by the thousands on sun-baked ranges and beside waterless streams and sand-choked springs.”

The disasters of the 1860s were almost biblical. In addition to flood and drought came millions of grasshoppers which “swept across the country like a devastating fire,” and a virulent epidemic of smallpox, which was particularly devastating to the Indians of California.

“According to the federal census there were nearly 1.2 million cattle in California in 1860; by 1870 that number had decreased to 670,000–a drop of close to 46 percent,” Cleland writes. “During the same decade the number of cattle in Los Angeles County fell from 70,000 to 20,000–a loss of over 71 percent.”

These things proved disastrous to the Spanish/Mexican rancheros.

Of the “few Spanish Californians who had been able to maintain at least a portion of their original holdings until the coming of the drought…almost none, even of that small number, survived the widespread ruin of the mid-sixties…the little that was left of their once lordly estates passed forever into alien hands,” Cleland writes.

American settlers kept pouring into the Golden State, establishing farms and towns.

For example, in 1857, a group of fifty Germans bought a tract of 1,200 acres of the Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana from Don Bernardo Yorba and Don Pacifico Ontiveros, “and began the experiment on co-operative community development called Anaheim.”

“Under the stimulus of rapidly increasing immigration, the great cattle ranchos, one by one, gave way to orchards, vineyards, and grain fields,” Cleland writes.

An important transitional figure between the Mexican and American eras of southern California history was Abel Stearns.

Born in Massachusetts in 1798, Stearns left home at an early age for a life at sea, working on trading ships that went to South America and China.

In 1827, he moved to Mexico and became a naturalized citizen. He came to the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1829 and became a successful merchant and storekeeper. 

“He bartered groceries, liquors, and dry goods for hides and tallow from the neighboring ranchos, and purchased furs from American trappers who came to California,” Cleland writes.

He bought a warehouse in San Pedro where he bought hides and tallow from local ranches and sold them to Yankee trading ships, becoming one of the wealthiest merchants in southern California.

Being an American, he sometimes came into conflict with Mexican authorities. Two Mexican governors tried unsuccessfully to get Stearns banished from the country for such alleged crimes as smuggling and other illegal activity. When a large amount of contraband goods was found in his San Pedro warehouse, Stearns avoided prosecution and instead got himself appointed customs administrator. He was the original “teflon Don.”

In 1835, Stearns face was badly disfigured in a knife attack with a drunk sailor, earning him the moniker “Cara de Caballo” or “Horse Face.”

At age 40, Stearns married the 14-year-old daughter of an influential local ranchero, Don Juan Bandini.

Around this time, he began acquiring land, and lots of it from cash-strapped Californios, including is father-in-law.

“With Rancho Los Alamitos as a nucleus, Stearns built up the largest land and cattle empire in southern California,” Cleland writes. “His long residence in the country and intimate knowledge of the business affairs and financial difficulties of all the large landholders enabled him to add one ranch after another to his holdings on highly advantageous terms…By 1862 Stearns had acquired over 200,000 acres of the choicest land in the Los Angeles and San Bernardino areas.”

He may have been immune from legal consequences, but he was not immune from mother nature. He suffered huge losses during the drought of the mid-sixties.

In 1868, he and a few business associates formed a Trust, the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Land Company, to market, subdivide, and sell his vast land holdings.

Stearns died in 1871.

“He witnessed the development of the ranchos, the annexation of California by the United States, the revolutionary changes resulting form the Gold Rush, the cattle boom of the early fifties, and the Great Drought,” Cleland writes. “More than any other man of his generation, he thus personified both the southern California of the Mexican tradition and the southern California of the American period.”

By the 1870s, many of the large ranchos were being broken up and subdivided into smaller farms and towns.

The coming of the transcontinental railroad brought another boom of settlers and real estate in the 1880s.

It was in this context, in 1887, that two grain merchants from Boston, George and Edward Amerige, purchased land just north of Anaheim that once belonged to Juan Pacifico Ontiveros and then Abel Stearns to found a town. They called it Fullerton.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

Last year, authors Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn released a book entitled Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World. The book chronicles how a scrappy, underground local punk scene grew and morphed into a major force in popular music. 

“In the surroundings of a seemingly placid suburban utopia with its patchwork of manicured lawns and cookie-cutter houses with crystal blue backyard pools and straitlaced parents in their corporate jobs, the children of these model citizens were looking for life outside of the American dream–they wanted to make their own dreams, or in some cases their own nightmares,” Jackson and Kohn write.

I’ve decided to organize this book report around cities, and some of the venues and bands that contributed to this influential musical subculture.

Costa Mesa

An early hub of OC punk was a club in Costa Mesa called the Cuckoo’s Nest, where in 1979 club owner Jerry Roach started booking punk bands like The Crowd, T.S.O.L., the Adolescents, Agent Orange, and Social Distortion.

It is rumored that “slam dancing” and the “mosh pit” originated at the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Punks would gather in large numbers both inside the club and outside in the parking lot, where sometimes they would clash with patrons of a nearby cowboy bar called Zubies.

“But of all the foes of the Cuckoo’s Nest, the police and city council were the biggest,” Jackson and Kohn write. “Police began nightly sting operations, stationing themselves outside of the club and cracking down hard on both the punks and the club itself.”

This clash is documented in the films Urban Struggle: The Battle of the Cuckoo’s Nest (1981) and We Were Feared (2010).

The crackdowns by the police and city officials resulted in the Cuckoo’s Nest closing in 1981.

“It was a long, hard road, it burned hot and fast, and it wasn’t meant to last,” Roach said.

Huntington Beach

An influential early band out of Huntington Beach was True Sounds of Liberty (T.S.O.L.), led by frontman Jack Grisham.

“Grisham’s voice and charisma onstage was a mix of poetic sensitivity, brutal violence, and cross-dressing theatrics,” Jackson and Kohn write. “Jack used to wear a dress and play in drag so that somebody would say something to him and he’d have an excuse to beat them up. That was fun for him.”

Other important Huntington Beach bands included The Crowd, The Outsiders, Love Canal, and the Vandals.

T.S.O.L, the Vandals, and Fullerton’s D.I. were featured in Penelope Spheeris 1983 film Suburbia, about the Southern California punk subculture.

“Here was the surfing and the skating and the energy of the beach igniting with punk rock to kind of explode during that time,” Jackon and Kohn write.

Both skating and punk made kids targets for the police.

A popular punk venue in downtown Huntington Beach was Safari Sam’s, which provided a haven for local bands to gather and perform. Of course, these shows also became a magnet for the police.

After the infamous OP Pro Riots of 1986, “the city cracked down on venues like Safari Sam’s. Within two weeks, five clubs shut down, including the famous Golden Bear,” Jackson and Kohn write.

Another important entity to come out of Huntington Beach was Goldenvoice, a concert promotion company created by Gary Tovar. 

“In 1981, most club promoters wanted no part of punk rock, especially in Orange County,” Jackson and Kohn write. “It wasn’t considered a sound or a culture–just a nuisance and a major liability. One of the few who embraced it was a guy named Gary Tovar. The prospect of teenage mayhem didn’t scare him, and neither did the raw magnetism of the sound and community that came with it.”

Tovar began creating opportunities for punk bands to reach bigger crowds. For example, between 1983 and 1985, Goldenvoice organized what were arguably the biggest punk shows in the world at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Bands like GBH, the Exploited, TSOL, Suicidal Tendencies, UK Subs, Circle Jerks, the Dickies, Dead Kennedys, the Vandals, Black Flag, and many others played for large crowds at rowdy shows.

Tovar was also a major trafficker of marijuana, a lucrative business that helped to fund Goldenvoice in those wild early days. He eventually was arrested in 1991 and did prison time.

Today, Goldenvoice is one of the biggest concert promotion companies in the world, perhaps best known for putting on Coachella.

Santa Ana

A notable band to emerge from Santa Ana was The Middle Class.

“The Middle Class consisted of the Atta brothers (Mike, Jeff, and Bruce) and bassist Mike Patton,” Jackson and Kohn write. “Formed in 1977…they were one of the first punk bands to emerge from Orange County. Their single “Out of Vogue” was played on KROQ by Rodney Bingenheimer and they’re widely considered the pioneers of hardcore.”

Fullerton

Of particular interest to me were the chapters on Fullerton’s contribution to the early punk scene with bands like the Mechanics, the Omlits, the Detours, Naughty Women, Social Distortion, the Adolescents, Agent Orange, D.I., and Eddie and the Subtitles.

“Fullerton was a very repressed, Republican majority in general,” former Social Distortion drummer Derek O’Brien said. “Outsiders who did not fit the perfect image of the status quo had a rough time and were judged harshly. The jocks ruled the schools and if you could not afford the cool cars, did not dress to their code, or fit into some obvious clique or category, not only did you not get the chicks–you were likely to get your ass kicked and had to watch your back!”

Mike Ness, frontman of Social Distortion, grew up in a chaotic household in Fullerton. He found solace and escape in punk rock.

As a youth, Ness also got into drugs and burglary. After being kicked out of Fullerton High School, he went to Troy, where he met Casey Royer. The two formed Social Distortion.

Ness’s apartment at 1801 Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton, dubbed “The Black Hole” became a haven for local punks, and immortalized in the Adolescents song “Kids of the Black Hole.”

Chaz Ramirez owned and operated Casbah Studios in Fullerton, where a number of important punk albums were recorded.

The Adolescents, formed in 1979, included Casey Royer, Rikk Agnew, Anthony Brandenburg and Steve Soto.

The Adolescents’ released their self-titled debut album (known as the Blue Album) in 1981.

“The songs, written by literal adolescents, became the blueprint for hardcore and even post-hardcore. It was an instant classic, and the band was surprised by its reception,” Jackson and Kohn write. “The Adolescents pushed punk forward and created a definitive Orange County sound to an audience outside the Southland.”

After the Adolescents broke up, Casey Royer founded the band D.I.

Many of these early OC punk bands received their first widespread exposure through Rodney Bingheimer’s show on KROQ called Rodney on the ROQ. Bingenheimer released popular compilation records featuring local bands.

In those days, Fullerton had a few venues that would host punk shows. including Ichabod’s, the Galaxy (a roller rink), and the Commonwealth Pub downtown. Fullerton College and (a bit later) Cal State Fullerton would also host punk shows sometimes.

Social Distortion went on their first national tour in 1982 along with Youth Brigade and Minor Threat. This tour is chronicled in the documentary “Another State of Mind” (1984).

In 1983, Social Distortion released their now iconic record “Mommy’s Little Monster.”

“Raw, a bit sloppy, and full of attitude, the album’s hardcore sound encapsulated the Fullerton scene,” Jackson and Kohn write. “Ness’s storytelling was vastly different from the punk that was emanating at the time.”

Unfortunately, Ness’s drug use (which included heroin) was getting out of control, culminating in an overdose that nearly killed him. 

In 1985, thankfully, Ness got sober. In the process, he began exploring other genres of music that would become important to Social Distortion’s evolving sound–country, rockabilly, roots, and Americana music.

Their 1988 album “Prison Bound” leaned into these genres and storytelling. The band signed to Epic Records in 1989 and released their major label debut (the self-titled album “Social Distortion”) in 1990.

This album contains the hit songs “Ball and Chain” (about addiction) and the autobiographical “Story of my Life” which features “Ness ruminating on how Fullerton had changed and how things like gentrification had started to chip away the the city’s character. He points to how Farrells’ a pool hall that used to be at State College and Chapman, became a 7-11,” Jackson and Kohn write.

While still punk, Social Distortion had developed their own unique sound that was also more catchy and palatable to a wider audience.

This album went gold and made Social Distortion rock stars. By 1991, they were opening for Neil Young and Crazy Horse alongside Sonic Youth.

Garden Grove

The most famous punk band to come out of Garden Grove is The Offspring, formed in 1983 by high school buddies Bryan “Dexter” Holland and Greg Kriesel.

Holland was kind of the polar opposite of Ness. He was president of the math club and Pacifica High School’s valedictorian in 1984. Alongside his music career, Holland earned a Ph.D in molecular biology. He was definitely a nerd.

But he was also a punk.

“There was a rebellion against whatever the homogeneity of Orange County was because it was this weird feeling,” Holland recalls. “I don’t remember any of us being overtly political, but we were bored.”

The Offspring released “Smash” in 1994, which propelled them to punk stardom. Songs like “Come Out and Play” were in regular rotation on KROQ and MTV.

1994 was a big year for punk rock breaking through to the mainstream. That year, Green Day released “Dookie,” Bad Religion released “Stranger Than Fiction,” Rancid released “And Out Come the Wolves” and NOFX released “Punk in Drublic.” 

1994 is also the year I discovered punk. I was a 15-year old freshman at Fullerton High School. I loved Green Day, the Offspring, Bad Religion, and Rancid. Although I was not a “punk” in the traditional sense, these catchy songs were played constantly on KROQ and pretty much all my friends were into them.

In high school, my friend Matt would occasionally share with me “older” punk bands like D.I. and Dead Kennedys, and I must confess I wasn’t really into them. It was too abrasive. I, like many of my contemporaries, preferred the more radio-friendly pop-punk.

It wasn’t until many years later, when I was like 30 years old, that I re-discovered old school punk rock bands like The Adolescents, Agent Orange, and the Middle Class–and started to appreciate their rawness and understood their rebellion against the popular music of their time.

In this sense, the pop punk breakthrough of the 90s was a double-edged sword. While it brought mainstream success and exposure to many bands, it also kind of softened the hard edge and raison d’etre of the original scene.

The 90s also saw the breakthrough of punk’s zany cousin, ska, which combined horns and catchy hooks with punk guitars.

Popular OC ska bands that emerged in the 90s included the Aquabats (Huntington Beach), as well as Save Ferris and Reel Big Fish (both from Garden Grove).

Anaheim

Probably the biggest ska/punk band to come out of Orange County was No Doubt, who were from Anaheim.

Their early music was influenced by older ska bands like the Specials, the Selector, Madness, and Fishbone.

No Doubt were unique in the male-dominated Orange County punk scene, as they had a female front person, Gwen Stefani.

In 1995, No Doubt released “Tragic Kingdom,” their second album. The title was a play on the Magic Kingdom (aka Disneyland). The cover art also referenced Orange County, parodying orange crate label art, with Stefani holding a rotten orange.

“Tragic Kingdom” blew up and made No Doubt rock superstars. 

“[Stefani] became a role model for women’s empowerment, and soon young girls all over the world replicated Stefani’s sense of glamorous tomboy style,” Jackson and Kohn write.

Another Anaheim contribution to local punk history was the Doll Hut, a small roadhouse off the 5 freeway, owned by Linda Jemison.

“The catalyst Jemison said inspired the Doll Hut was the closing of Commonwealth Pub in Fullerton. Known as a major hub for early punks in OC, its shuttering suddenly left a lot of musicians with nowhere to go,” Jackson and Kohn write.

“We thought well, you know, we’re gonna get them to come here,” Jemison said of the Hut.

This tiny club hosted some heavy punk hitters, including Social Distortion, Bad Religion, and the Offspring.

Although Linda sold the Doll Hut in the early aughts, the club continues to host punk shows regularly.

Epilogue

“On April 3, 2024, on Ness’s sixty-second birthday, he was presented with the key to the city of Fullerton. Yes, Mike Ness, the former Punk of the Month at the Fullerton Police Department who’d spent just as much time there as he would rehearsing, was honored as a city dignitary. The Mike Ness who was lucky to make to to 23. This day in Fullerton was declared Mike Ness Day,” Jackson and Kohn write. “The ceremony, which took place in downtown Fullerton, saw Ness presented by Mayor Nick Dunlap, who told the assembled crowd that he grew up listening to Social Distortion (imagine telling Ness the mayor of Fullerton listened to his music forty years ago?), and Ness had the classic ‘rags to riches tale, only it’s not fiction.”

“Beyond our love for music is our love for our community,” Mayor Dunlap said. “That’s what brings us here today because we are able to celebrate a living legend who is among our greatest exports to the world, right there with the Fender Stratocaster.”

Tearing Down the Orange Curtain is an excellent chronicle of how an important local subculture became one of Orange County’s most interesting cultural contributions to popular music.

My one criticism of the book is that it kind of glosses over two aspects of the Orange County punk scene that are significant but kind of embarrassing. 

The first is racist skinhead Nazi punk that historically found a home in Huntington Beach. I’ve recently been reading the 2026 book American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate by Eric Lichtblau, which chronicles this unfortunate subculture.

The other is the Christian punk and ska scene in Orange County. I grew up attending a mega-church in Fullerton, and was exposed to this side of the scene. Bands like the OC Supertones, Plankeye, and Slick Shoes would play at local churches. Some of them, like the Supertones, would play at OC’s big Christian youth event at Anaheim Stadium, the Harvest Crusade. Evangelical Christianity and punk rock..a match made in Orange County.

That said, I highly recommend Tearing Down the Orange Curtain. What inspires me about the early punk scene was how participatory and DIY it was. Oftentimes, we are encouraged to be merely consumers of culture. The early punks were often creators of culture–forming bands, making zines, being creative. They were also creating a meaningful rebellion against the boring, conservative suburban monoculture that was Orange County in the 1970s and 80s.

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

I’m currently reading the book Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World by Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn. As I’ve been reading, I’ve been compiling a playlist of Fullerton punk albums from the formative years of the scene. Click on the album title to listen to it:

“Dead Drunks Don’t Dance” by Eddie and the Subtitles

“Living in Darkness” by Agent Orange

“The Blue Album” by Adolescents

“Ancient Artifacts” by D.I.

“All by Myself” by Rikk Agnew

“Mommy’s Little Monster” by Social Distortion

“Prison Bound” by Social Distortion

“Horse Bites Dog Cries” by D.I.

“Brats in Battalions” by Adolescents

Stay tuned for my book report on Tearing Down the Orange Curtain!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Fullerton Observer newspaper was formed in 1978 by Ralph and Natalie Kennedy and friends to provide a more progressive counterbalance to the more conservative Fullerton News-Tribune and Orange County Register. Back then, Orange County (including Fullerton) was dominated by Republicans, and the Observer crew were definitely in the minority. The Fullerton Public Library has digital archives of the Observer stretching back to 1979. I am in the process of reading over these archives and creating a year-by-year summary of top stories. Here are some top stories from 2005.

The Iraq War

In national and international news, the Iraq War continued, costing thousands of lives and American dollars. Some local residents protested the war. Many others supported it.

In 2004, the revelations that American military members had tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib shocked the conscience of the world.

A lesser-known instance of similar behavior was the case of twelve National Guard troops from Fullerton’s A-Company of the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry who were “charged with misconduct in the abuse of Iraqi civilians rainging from extortion of Iraqi owned businesses to failing to stop the abuse of others to actual torture of detainees including use of a stun gun on the genitals and a gunshot near the head of a detainee,” the Observer reported.

“Three of the soldiers have received prison sentences, four were sentenced to hard labor, others received a reduction in rank, and another case is pending,” according to the Observer. “Battalion commander Lt. Col Patrick Frey was replaced and reassigned. The abuse was discovered after an uninvolved soldier handed a video over to his commander.”

Technology

In 2005, Fullerton experimented with free downtown wi-fi service covering a 24-block area.

“The intent of the network is to bring to the area more visitors and businesses that are tech savvy,” the Observer reported. “The City’s Redevelopment Agency is providing funding for the network and will underwrite its operating cost for at least the first year.”

Living downtown at the time, I remember the free wi-fi. Alas, it did not last.

Pollution

In 2005, the City of Fullerton was dealing with the cleanup of at least three sites of former industrial pollution.

The first was a “plume” of contaminants around the border of Fullerton and Anaheim that would eventually become the North Basin Superfund site.

In 2005, the Orange County Water District sued several companies to try to get them to clean up their waste. Companies listed in the suit included some big names in manufacturing like Northrop Grumman. Cleanup of this plume would be delayed for decades by litigation.

Another site of pollution was the former Hughes Aircraft plant, which had been developed into what is now Amerige Heights, with housing, an elementary school, and a shopping center.

And the third site of pollution was the newly-constructed Union Pacific Park which, it was found, was contaminated with toxins from a former manufactured Gas Plant owned by Sempra Energy.

In 2005, Fullerton sued Sempra to clean up the site, but they were denying responsibility for the pollution. As is often the case, cleanup would be delayed by expensive and drawn-out litigation.

Public Input? Keep it Short!

In 2005, Fullerton City Council shortened the amount of time that individual residents could speak on agenda items from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. Today, the time allotted is 3 minutes, and sometimes 2, depending on the meeting.

“If the Council is interested in increasing participation, this decision sends the wrong signal,” Observer political commentator Vince Buck wrote. “Telling citizens that they talk too much does not send a message that public input into city decision making is valued.”

Arts & Culture

In 2004, the historic Fox Theater downtown was saved from the wrecking ball by an 11th hour anonymous donation of $1 million. 

After the Fox was saved came the long process of renovating the theater, so that the public could enjoy it. This process has taken 22 years…and counting.

But in 2005, hopes were high and residents were encouraged to volunteer to clean up the neglected theater.

Renovations, it was reported, were “ahead of schedule.”

The Fox Theater Foundation began hosting fundraising events like the annual “Hollywood in Fullerton” and outdoor movie screenings on the back of the theater. I remember attending some of these–they often drew a large turnout.

In other film news, a young Fullerton filmmaker named Ahmad Zahra (who is now on city council) held some local screenings of his film “On Common Grounds” which is a documentary about three different faith groups (one Christian, one Jewish, and one Muslim) working together to build a house for a poor family in Mexico.

For many years, Fullerton had a theater group called Fullerton Civic Light Opera that staged plays and musicals at the High School Auditorium. Sadly, they are no more, and their former headquarters is now a pet food store.

In art news, the Fullerton Museum Center was looking for young artists to help with a mural on the parking structure that sits on the former Fender Instruments Factory. The mural depicts Leo Fender and his musical legacy.

A new art gallery called 7 Muses opened downtown.

And a quirky group of older women called the Red Hat Society had a storefront and hosted events around town.

Housing: To Build or Not to Build

Fullerton, being a largely suburban community consisting of many single-family home neighborhoods, has experienced a similar development pattern to other Southern California cities.

Following World War II, with a massive population influx, housing construction soared, with an explosion in construction of relatively affordable single-family homes. Farmland gave way to suburbs, schools, industrial parks, and shopping centers. Cities throughout the southland built “out” instead of “up”–creating enormous suburban sprawl.

As time went on, cities like Fullerton became largely “built out” with these types of single-family neighborhoods. People continued moving to Southern California for the same reasons previous generations had (climate, jobs, culture, family), but housing production slowed, and (given the basic economic law of supply and demand) housing prices began to rise, as more people competed for fewer housing units.

Those who lived in those single-family neighborhoods often organized through homeowners associations or community groups to prevent higher-density development to accommodate the newcomers. In Fullerton, this has played out in countless examples of neighbor opposition to new, higher density development.

Back in the 80s, 90s, and 00s both conservatives and liberals alike in suburban communities often opposed higher-density development, whether to protect “neighborhood character” or for environmental reasons.

Over time, the net effect of this neighbor opposition to new housing has resulted in fewer units being built and the current housing affordability crisis that the younger generation faces.

Today, there is widespread recognition that opposing new housing construction keeps housing prices high and harms the economic possibilities of those who can barely afford housing.

But in 2005, opposition to high density housing, like the proposed SunnyCrest Development, was very popular.

“Emotions were running high when my husband and I joined more than 100 citizens attending a developer-sponsored meeting January 11 at the Ebell Club,” a local resident wrote. “Concerned neighbors pointed out that the project was too dense and totally inconsistent with the semi-rural nature of the surrounding community…Time and again, speakers said that this and other anticipated development projects will ultimately change Fullerton from a family-centered, suburban city to an urban center.”

Local homeowners probably thought that, by opposing developments like this, they were “doing their part” to fight the big bad developer. What they often failed to realize was that, by keeping the housing supply low, they were also making it much harder for their children and grandchildren to be able to afford homes in the future.

“Overdevelopment is a problem facing the entire city and, before it is too late, citizens should let appointed and elected officials know they are concerned with the direction the city seems to be taking,” stated representatives from North Fullerton Homeowners Association, Fullerton Citizens for Smart Growth and Residents Against Providence Development.

Compounding the affordability problem were proposed cuts to federal housing programs. Then, as now, the stated reason for these cuts was to reduce the federal deficit. But then, as now, these cuts were offset by tax cuts and an expensive foreign war, so the deficit actually worsened.

At the local level, Fullerton was considering cuts to its Housing Rehabilitation Program at the same time it was systematically targeting the largely Latino Maple neighborhood for city code violations. Fullerton also reduced the hours of a Community Took Bank, which provided low-income residents with the tools to get their properties up to code.

“It doesn’t make sense to write a lot of code violations in a low income area of the City and then cut the Tool Bank that would help residents to conform to the requirements, but that is exactly what Council did, in a 4 to 1 vote to hire another code enforcement officer instead,” the Observer stated.

Facing pushback from Maple neighborhood residents, Council then voted to put a moratorium on permit fees in the area being targeted by the aggressive code enforcement.

“Code Enforcement is, by its very nature, arrogant and oppressive and a tool the ‘haves’ use to control the ‘have nots,’ wrote Allen Baldwin, Executive Director Orange County Community Housing Corporation. “Those most adversely oppressed are those without resources who oftentimes break under the pressure of not being able to afford to correct the code violation.”

In 2005, rent was pretty damn high. According to one report, a family in Orange County had to make $25.69 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, while the mean wage earned by renters was just $15 per hour. Things are, of course, worse today.

“The housing crisis is getting worse, not better,” said Scott Darrell, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, an advocate group for affordable housing in Orange County. “We need to both raise the minimum wage and expand housing subsidies.”

And Fullerton was not without its slumlords.

A group of renters at the Parkin Garden Apartments on Gilbert started working with the City to demand cleanup of unsafe conditions including rats, cockroaches, hot water problems, leaks and fire hazards. The group was supported by groups like Fair Housing of Orange County and Latino Health Access.

“We are tired of putting our kids through living here and getting no response from the owner or management,” said Lori Ciraulo, a longtime resident.

One area where opposition to new housing was, in my opinion, justified was Coyote Hills.

“At the border of Orange and Los Angeles counties, it is in an area where little native open space remains,” the Observer reported. “This densely populated, middle class area has a desperate need for open space and an even more desperate need for natural open space for education, recreation, and the unique ecological values of this disappearing ecosystem.”

For decades now, the Friends of Coyote Hills has been working to preserve this 510-acre space from development by its owner, Chevron.

One important resident of Coyote Hills was the California gnatcatcher, a federally threatened bird that nested there.

“There are approximately 500 pairs of gnatcatchers in Orange County, and 46 pairs in Coyote Hills,” the Observer reported. “Their numbers are decreasing rapidly due to the loss of their natural habitat.”

Other birds of Coyote hills include the Song Sparrow, Cactus Wren, Bewick’s Wren, Loggerhead Shrike, Red Tailed Hawk, White Tailed Kite, Northern Harrier, Coopers Hawk, California Quail, Great Horned and Burrowing Owl.

The Demise of the Light Rail Idea

In 1990, Orange County residents voted to pass Measure M, a half cent sales tax for transportation improvements. The envisioned transportation improvements included “urban rail,” bus transportation, improvements to freeways and interchanges, roads and city streets. 

Freeways like the I-5, 405 and 55 were improved with additional traffic lanes and interchanges. 

The Metrolink rail system was inaugurated in 1994 and was successful.

In 1997, the Orange County Transportation Administration (OCTA) began plans for a light rail project called CenterLine. The first proposed segment was a 28-mile stretch from Irvine to Fullerton. The plan was to ultimately expand the Light Rail to 87 miles and connect it with the Los Angeles Metro system.

However, the Centerline encountered a well-organized opposition.

Facing opposition from cities like Irvine and Anaheim, the Centerline idea was shortened to just 9 miles. Then, when federal matching funds failed to materialize, the whole project was scrapped.

“OCTA committee members, who voted 7-0 to drop the $ 1.2-billion rail line, instead favor a $900-million dedicated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system,” the Observer reported.

This despite the fact that a CSUF survey showed that a majority of Orange County voters were favorable to a light rail system.

In (somewhat) positive news, a new Brea Trolley offered free rides to Birch Street. It wasn’t really a trolley, but a bus made to look like a trolley, and it didn’t last long.

Free Speech at Troy

School administrators at Troy High School removed Ann Long, co-editor of the school newspaper from her position “after she published an article about two bisexual students and one gay student in an effort to raise awareness on campus,” the Observer reported.

The article “dealt with the struggles that gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals go through when they come out to their loved ones.”

The reason given for her suspension was that Long did not obtain the students’ parents’ permission before publishing the article.

Free speech advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Safe Schools Coalition, sent a letter to George Giokaris, superintendent of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District calling for Long’s reinstatement as editor-in-chief.

A petition circulated among Troy High students, calling for the school to reverse its decision, generated 276 signatures. 

“By forcing Ms. Long to step down from her position, district and school officials are indirectly endorsing censorship of student press,” the petition stated. “Ms. Long’s article was unfairly discriminated against for its content regarding sexuality. If she is forced to resign, it will set a precedent for stifled freedom of the press for all Californian student journalists.”

It’s unclear from the reporting whether Long was reinstated in the editor position. Stay tuned for stories from 2006.

In 2005, the ACLU got involved in another Fullerton education issue involving laptops being provided to students at the new Fisler Elementary School with a fee of $1500. Laptops were also provided at three other schools.

Not providing all students in the district with laptops and charging for them raised questions of fairness and equity.

“The Fullerton School District received a letter from the Orange County ACLU’s Director Hector Villagra [who] challenged the constitutionality of the laptop program citing the court case Hartzell v. Connell which indicates a school that conditions a student’s participation in educational activities upon the payment of a fee is not a free school,” the Observer reported.

Again, stay tuned for my report on 2006 to see how this issue was resolved.

In other sad education news, the Library Bookmobile was decommissioned.

Police Misconduct

Two Fullerton Police officers, John Cross and Gregg Nowling, were placed on paid administrative leave after a video of their mistreatment of a Black man showed them spouting racial slurs and other abusive language in the booking room. An eyewitness alleged the man was also physically assaulted. The victim was stopped for playing his car radio “too loud.”

The man later accused the officer of stopping him because he was black. According to the police report, the man was arrested for giving a false identity, resisting arrest, and making threats to police officers. 

“The man said that all of his actions were in direct response to being mistreated by the officer,” the Observer reported. “He admitted to giving a false identity because he was afraid there was something wrong with his license (though when the officer ran the mans correct identification it indicated he had a valid license and no previous record or warrants).”

The case was referred to the Orange County District Attorney’s office, who declined to prosecute. The officers were both reinstated, but one (later identified as Gregg Nowling), resigned after it was discovered that he lied to his supervisor.

By resigning instead of being fired the officer may have been able to keep his pension and get hired by a different department. Hopefully, that was not the case.

Deaths

Famous Broadway and film star John Raitt, who attended Fullerton High School, died. He was the father of pop singer Bonnie Raitt.

Dancer, choreographer, actor, and co-owner of Angelo’s & Vinci’s Ristorante Steven Peck died.

Stay tuned for top news stories from 2006!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Fullerton Observer newspaper was formed in 1978 by Ralph and Natalie Kennedy and friends to provide a more progressive counterbalance to the more conservative Fullerton News-Tribune and Orange County Register. Back then, Orange County (including Fullerton) was dominated by Republicans, and the Observer crew were definitely in the minority. The Fullerton Public Library has digital archives of the Observer stretching back to 1979. I am in the process of reading over these archives and creating a year-by-year summary of top stories. Here are some top stories from 2004.

In 2004, Fullerton celebrated 100 years of incorporation as a city, although the town was founded in 1887.

Bush Re-Elected and The Iraq War Ramps Up

In national and international news, America was embroiled in the Iraq War, which, in retrospect, was not our finest hour.

Republican George W. Bush was re-elected as president. 

“Seldom has a president faced so many challenging issues, many of his own making, and George Bush seems inclined to make all of them worse,” Observer political commentator Vince Buck wrote. “The Iraq situation has no acceptable solution, which will put further pressure on this limited president to which he may not react well.”

The Governator

In 2004, California’s governor was Hollywood actor/bodybuilder/Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. One thing the “Governator” did was to veto a bill that would have raised the minimum wage in California by $5.00. Minimum wage at that time was $6.75 an hour.

According to Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy director Stephen Levy “even if the raise in wages was enacted immediately, it would still leave minimum wage lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1970.” Thanks, Arnie!

Local Politics

For most of its history, Fullerton City Council was dominated by Republicans. However, in 2004, a female Latina Democrat named Sharon Quirk was elected.

Quirk, along with fellow Democrat Doug Chaffee, was endorsed by a newly created political group called Neighbors United for Fullerton (NUFF).

Important issues in the 2004 race were preserving Coyote Hills and the Fox Theater, $150 million in deferred infrastructure repairs, concerns about the density of development, and rowdiness in the downtown area.

Perhaps in direct contrast to NUFF was another newly-created political action committee called Friends for Fullerton’s Future, which was created with the sole purpose, according to their filing statement, “To Oppose Candidate Doug Chaffee.”

Who were Friends for Fullerton’s Future? In 2004, the organization consisted of one man, George Bushala Jr, a contributor to the campaign of incumbent Republican Shawn Nelson.  

The other two City Council winners in 2004 were Nelson and Richard “Dick” Jones.

According to the Observer, Nelson “ran a campaign notable for its reliance on out-of-town and developer money. Much of the negative campaigning in this election was associated with Nelson supporters.”

Despite spending a large amount of his own money, Doug Chaffee was roundly defeated. He was, according to the Observer, “the target of the most scurrilous barrage of negative material Fullerton has seen. The source of this material was an organization called Friends For Fullerton’s Future, whose sole purpose was to attack him.”

One of the main attacks against Chaffee was that he was supportive of “high density development” because he owned a 59-unit senior housing unit on Amerige.

Today, Friends for Fullerton’s Future is the name of a blog associated with Tony Bushala (George Jr.’s brother) and friends that continues to regularly criticize (mostly) Democratic City Council members as well as comment on city council doings from (mostly) libertarian perspective with a “take no prisoners” style. Because the blog is associated with a prominent property owner who spends a lot on local political campaigns, it is hard sometimes to determine whether blog’s purpose is genuine discourse or self-interest. Perhaps both.

Aside from local developers and property owners like the Bushalas, a major player in City Council politics were the police and fire unions, which spent thousands supporting their preferred candidates.

“The police and fire unions have been playing a high risk game in recent years in an effort to create a Council that will provide them with generous benefits,” Buck wrote. “The result this time should serve as a warning. They did not support the top vote-getters.”

Pollution

In 2004, Fullerton continued to have to deal with the lingering effects of industrial pollution, such as the former site of a manufactured gas site owned by Sempra Gas located at 144 W. Walnut Ave, on the new Paseo (Union Pacific) Park on Truslow Ave.

The Gas Company would have to remove about 3000 tons of soil that was contaminated with bad stuff like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PCE, benzene and other toxins.

One wonders how the City could build a park without knowing that it was contaminated.

Another site of industrial pollution was the former Hughes Plant in west Fullerton, which was being developed into a housing and commercial center called Amerige Heights.

“The effects of years of disposing of pollutants at the former Hughes/ Raytheon site on Malvern, continues in the form of persistent 1,1- DCE, other VOCs and 1,4-dioxane still leaking into the drinking water aquifer underlying the property,” the Observer reported.

Art & Culture

Efforts were underway to raise enough money to save the Fox Theater from the wrecking ball. As a November deadline approached, the Fox Historic Theater Foundation had raised around $500,000 from community members.

Fullerton’s Redevelopment Agency approved a $ 1.65 million “challenge” grant to the Fullerton Historic Theatre Foundation for the purchase of the Fox Theatre. This was about half of the funds necessary to purchase the theater.

Property developer the Morgan Group had the option to purchase the theater from its owner, Ed Lewis. They wanted to tear it down and build apartments. The Morgan Group had given campaign money to City Council members Mike Cleseri ($11,500), Shawn Nelson ($9,000), and Dick Jones ($6,000). These three voted against the loan proposal.

And then, at the eleventh hour, an anonymous donor gave the Fox Theater Foundation the $1 million that was needed to purchase the theater and save it from destruction.

Some of the people who were involved in these early efforts to save the Fox included Chuck Estes, Tom Dalton, Jane Reifer, Todd Huffman, and Richard Odle.

The Downtown “Renaissance”

In the early 2000s, Downtown Fullerton was experiencing a “renaissance” of sorts, with new businesses popping up in what had formerly been a pretty sleepy area.

Some of these businesses were arts-focused, like West End Gallery and Steamers Jazz Club.

But this “renaissance” was not all galleries and jazz clubs. It also included a number of bars and nightclubs that brought some unwanted activity. 

“The Fullerton Police Department continues to work with the downtown restaurant bars to thwart the fights that occur at closing time,” the Observer reported. “Several large fights have occurred in April including one on April 20th on Amerige involving an uncooperative crowd of over 100 people that took the entire ‘Watch’ to clear…Surrounding retail businesses have reported broken glass, vomit, cigarette butts, other trash and rattling of doors setting off false burglar alarms.”

Sometimes the blame for this rowdy late-night activity took on a racist tone. 

The City Planning department ordered Revolucion cantina to remove its outdoor patio, citing rowdy activity, although police logs showed far fewer incidents at that location than surrounding bars like Back Alley and Rock ‘n Taco. The patrons of Revolucion were largely Latino. At one public meeting, city council member Mike Cleseri implied that the downtown fights were gang-related, a claim immediately denied by the police department.

In 2004, I moved into an apartment in the heart of Downtown Fullerton, atop Mulberry St. Ristorante. I can attest that, at that time, the downtown bar scene was pretty wild, especially on the weekends. Being 24 at the time, I didn’t really mind the lively nighttime activity. But I remember many nights, standing on my patio around 2am when the bars let out, and watching the mayhem below, including several fights.

The story of how and why city officials approved so many bars and nightclubs in such a condensed area will be explored in a future post.

Housing & Development

By the early 2000s, much of Fullerton was built out with housing tracts, shopping centers, and some industry. To accommodate new residents, more and higher density housing had to be built. At least that was the thinking at the time.

The aforementioned Bushala Brothers had, over the years, acquired lots of property around the railroad tracks, and were trying to develop these into housing. They tried, and failed, to get a massive apartment project approved in 1989. In 2004, they were back with a proposed 120-unit condo project. The Bushalas were partnering with developers the Olson Company to build the project.

This project, which seemed relatively uncontroversial, would eventually be built. However, another more controversial project was in the planning stages.

The City requested proposals from companies interested in building a mixed-use development on the downtown parking lots between Harbor and Malden and Wilshire and Commonwealth. 

And proposals they did receive, such as one from Pelican Properties to develop both sides of Amerige with 160 homes plus restaurants, retail, office and live/work space, and a parking garage.

This project would eventually become the controversial Amerige Court, which was ultimately voted down by Council. Stay tuned for more on that.

Early on in this process, some downtown businesses expressed concern about parking and noise from the proposed new development.

In an effort to “clean-up” a low-income Latino neighborhood around Maple School, the City ramped up its code enforcement with an aggressive program called the Neighborhood Enhancement Project–handing out hundreds of code violation citations.

These aggressive tactics were reminiscent of the aggressive neighborhood sweeps conducted in the 1990s, in which (in the name of public safety), police ransacked dozens of homes.

Just as they had back then, the community responded by organizing. Over 150 homeowners from the Maple Area met with City staff to understand why they were being targeted so aggressively.

Neighborhood leader Bobby Melendez said that while the program may have some merit, “the process is not sensitive to homeowners who are senior citizens on fixed incomes and families with low incomes” and added that “neighborhood improvement is the responsibility of both homeowners and the City…If the City is citing homeowners to fix code violations, the City must also take actions to improve neighborhood streets, trim trees and clean up the Lemon Street (Santa Fe Railroad) Underpass.”

The residents made it clear that neighborhood improvement was a two-way street.

The City offered grants to help residents with needed repairs, but there was an obvious disconnect between residents and the city, as “the 13 residents that have signed up are still waiting for lengthy paperwork to be completed or inspections to take place, hampered further because the City has no inspector on duty.”

Homelessness

With housing costs quite high in Fullerton, homelessness continued to be a problem.

Fullerton has always had a kind of patchwork solution to homelessness, involving the city, the police, local churches, and nonprofits.

During cold months, the National Guard Armory in west Fullerton was used as an emergency shelter in which people experiencing homelessness could get a meal and a foam cot on a hard floor to sleep on.

“Shelters like the Fullerton Armory can alleviate suffering during the winter months, and perhaps even save lives,” the Observer reported. “But they are not the answer to homelessness.”

Local nonprofit Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services (now called Pathways of Hope) was in the process of expanding their New Vista Shelter, which offered longer-term transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness.

Over 40 local building and supply companies donated products and services to help build the new housing.

Saving Coyote Hills

As the need for more housing became acute, it had to be balanced with a desire of local residents to preserve some local open space and access to nature.

Nowhere did this struggle play out more acutely than in the fight to preserve Coyote Hills from development by Chevron and its housing subsidiary Pacific Coast Homes. The plan was to build 760 homes and a shopping center on part of the 510-acre property, which was a coastal sage scrub habitat that contained numerous native plants and animal life, including the threatened California gnatcatcher bird.

“The Fullerton City Council and staff are taking all the comments from the community and from the Friends’ of Coyote Hills legal and biology experts into consideration before making a decision involving the last parcel of natural open space within city limits,” the Observer reported. “In the meantime, the Friends are researching funding sources to purchase the land as a park and nature preserve, as well as continuing with their efforts to increase public awareness of this treasure in Fullerton’s own back yard.”

Coyote Hills would become an increasingly important political issue.

Public Transit vs. OC’s Car Culture

As Orange County continued to grow in density, it also became more congested with traffic. One proposed solution to this was the construction of a light rail called Centerline, to be funded with Measure M funds obtained by a sales tax approved 1990.

Due to opposition from some quarters, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) shortened the proposed route by about half, from John Wayne Airport to the Civic Center in Santa Ana. The original Centerline route stretched from Fullerton to Irvine.

OC Supervisor Chris Norby (who had previously served on Fullerton City Council) voted against the project, stating that he felt the $900 million cost was too high for only 12,000 to 15,000 daily riders, which was the initial ridership forecast for the project.

Metrolink was started in 1994, with Measure M funds, 

Norby argued that “CenterLine could well become a fiscal black hole, diverting precious transportation dollars that could benefit the whole county.”

Instead, Norby supported Metrolink, which was established in 1994 with measure M dollars.

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by CSUF and the OC Business Council, found that 69% of Orange County residents supported the 9.3- mile light-rail starter segment of the Centerline project.

Wealthier areas like Yorba Linda were less likely to support public transit. 

“A $7.75 million Metrolink rail station planned for Yorba Linda since 1991 was recently rejected by unanimous vote of the city council, citing concerns of noise and traffic that it would bring to the area,” the Observer reported.

Most of the estimated 300 critics who turned out for the city council meeting belong to a group called Yorba Linda Residents Against the Metrolink Station.

As an occasional public transit user myself, I have noticed that there is definitely a social class element to users of public transit vs. drivers of cars in Orange County.

If some Orange Countians were against public transit, some were also against making the roads safer for bicycles.

In Fullerton, a Bicycle User’s Subcommittee had been established to recommend more bike-friendly policies.

According to long-time BUSC member Vince Buck, prior to the creation of the committee, “opportunities for improving the quality of life in Fullerton by encouraging non-motorized transportation were not being developed. The traffic staff and the T& CC were not interested–indeed were hostile–and would not address bicycle safety issues. They largely viewed bicycles as an impediment to traffic flow, rather than as an important contribution to the quality of life in Fullerton, an attitude that has not substantially changed.” 

Fullerton, and Orange County in general, has for decades been a “car culture.”

Grocery Store Worker Strike

Back in 2003, thousands of local grocery workers went on strike against proposed pay and benefit cuts.

“Marking the 100th day of the grocery workers strike a huge rally drew nearly 4,000 citizens to the Vons on Chapman in Garden Grove on Saturday January 17th,” the Observer reported.

The Strike affected 13,000 United Food & Commercial Workers union members and their families in Orange County.

The strike lasted five months, resulting in a new contract between union representatives. and Safeway (Vons & Pavilions), Kroger (Ralphs), Albertsons and federal mediator, Peter Hurtgen. 

The new agreement protected the wages and benefits of current workers, but kind of screwed over new hires, who would receive lower pay and reduced benefits. 

Was this a win for the grocery workers? Observer columnist Jon Dobrer didn’t think so.

“Yes, they preserved their wage caps but allowed a two-tiered system, where new hires can be brought in at a lower salary and with fewer benefits,” Dobrer wrote.

Same-Sex Marriage

In 2004, same-sex marriage was illegal in California. For a brief window between February and March, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing same-sex marriage licenses in what came to be known as the “Winter of Love.” Unfortunately, the California Supreme Court invalidated these. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized in California until 2013.

In Fullerton, Rick Herrera and Randy Baxter, authors of the “Life Partners” column in the Observer, “committed their lives to each other before 90 friends and family, in a Holy Union Ceremony at the Spring Field Banquet Center on Sunday, March 28th,” the Observer reported.

The ceremony was officiated by Pastor William R. Prickett of Dallas, Texas (an ordained Southern Baptist minister and longtime friend of Randy’s through the gay Christian group Evangelicals Concerned With Reconciliation).

Education

Fullerton celebrated the grand opening of its newest elementary school, Robert C. Fisler School, the first new school in 32 years. The new school had a theme of “Science and Technology.”

Fisler is located in the newly-built Amerige Heights development area and was named after retired Fullerton educator and longtime Fullerton School District Boardmember Robert “Bob” Fisler.

Fullerton has long struggled with the issue of educational equity between the more affluent schools in the north part of the city and the lower-income schools in the south.

Fisler was a brand new school in a new area with expensive homes and all of its students got laptops.

“Why not have Woodcrest or Richman become the “Science & Technology” school?” Observer education reporter Jan Youngman wondered. “And why should only Fisler have laptops for each student?”

Over 600 Cal State Fullerton students walked out of classes in 2004 to protest Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed additional budget cut of the CSU system. 

“Protestors say balancing the state budget by raising student fees will cause many students, already on the financial edge, to drop out,” the Observer reported.

It’s interesting to note that the original vision for the CSU system, as laid out in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, was that these public institutions be tuition-free.

Those who attended CSUF in the 1960s and 70s paid virtually no tuition. That vision would be abandoned, especially starting in the 1980s.

Old Bob

Old Bob, the large snapping turtle who lived at Laguna Lake for decades, was an attraction at the Fullerton Arboretum’s “Green Scene” plant sale. Bob had to be evacuated from Laguna Lake while it was being renovated.

Sometimes called “The legend of Laguna Lake,” Old Bob’s ultimate destination was unknown. There was a petition to get him a home at the Santa Ana Zoo.

Deaths

Longtime Fullerton resident William “Bill” Kroeger died at his home in Borrego Springs.

Bill was born in Fullerton in 1902. His grandfather, Henry, was an early developer of North Orange County and the second mayor of Anaheim. Bill graduated from high school in Fullerton in 1921.

Bill worked in the citrus industry on his family’s ranch, and then for the Corcoran Paper Company, starting as a truck driver, moving into sales and becoming a partner. 

He served on the planning commission and was elected to city council in 1954, serving as mayor from 1956 to 1958.

Stay tuned for top stories from 2005!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Fullerton Observer newspaper was formed in 1978 by Ralph and Natalie Kennedy and friends to provide a more progressive counterbalance to the more conservative Fullerton News-Tribune and Orange County Register. Back then, Orange County (including Fullerton) was dominated by Republicans, and the Observer crew were definitely in the minority. The Fullerton Public Library has digital archives of the Observer stretching back to 1979. I am in the process of reading over these archives and creating a year-by-year summary of top stories. Here are some top stories from 2003.

The Iraq War

It’s interesting to write about history that I remember. In 2003, I was living in Fullerton. I was 23 years old. Having grown up in a somewhat conservative evangelical environment (in Fullerton), I remember being generally supportive of the Iraq War. At the time, I bought into the official Bush/Cheney narrative that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator who had weapons of mass destruction and was somehow connected to Al-Qaeda and terrorism. 

With the hindsight of history, I know now that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator, but he did not have weapons of mass destruction and he was not connected to Al-Qaeda. Saddam was a secular leader. Al-Qaeda were religious fundamentalists. Such nuance was, I think, lost on many Americans, like me at the time.

It feels appropriate to think about the lead-up to 2003 American invasion of Iraq, because (as of this writing) America is currently involved in a new war against another middle eastern country, Iran. The rationale given by the Trump administration, nebulous as it has been, echoes many of the rationales given about the Iraq War. Iran, we were told, was a threat to the United States. I do not believe that is the case, as it was not the case with Iraq. Today, I am (I hope) more skeptical of claims made by political leaders.

In 2003, Fullerton was a more Republican place than it is today. So it has been fascinating to read the Fullerton Observer’s coverage of the leadup to the Iraq War in 2003. The Observer, being a generally liberal publication, tended to focus on protests against the war and reasons why it was a misguided endeavour. I’m sure this coverage angered many Fullertonians at the time. In hindsight, I think the Observer was generally correct.

In early 2003, prior to the invasion of Iraq, “290 Fullertonians took to the streets to question the rush to war,” the Observer reported. “The event was sparked by neighbors Dorian Hunter and Sally Zivitz who invited other concerned citizens to join them at the Downtown Plaza at noon.”

“We hope this puts Fullerton on the map as having some citizens who want to stand up for their beliefs. It was a good demonstration of the right to free speech, the freedom to assemble and question our governments motives for war. Thanks to all of the participants it was a great day!” said Dorian Hunter.

A resolution opposing the Iraq War was presented to Fullerton City Council, which was dominated by Republicans. Unsurprisingly, Council opposed the resolution.

“As 150,000 young men and women were sent to the other side of the world in preparation of the US preemptive war against Iraq a standing room only crowd gathered in City Council Chambers to present a resolution asking that our country seek other solutions and use war only as a last resort,” the Observer reported. “Over 100 cities have passed such resolutions, including most recently Los Angeles, but few were surprised by our Council’s denial to place the item on a future agenda for consideration.”

“It was discouraging to listen to the reasons offered by our Councilmen for their opposition to the anti-war resolution,” Vince Buck wrote. “Councilman Jones stated that many of the arguments offered during the evening were based on ‘erroneous information, emotions, and misinformation.’ The Council itself demonstrated that it was subject to the same weakness.”

Not everyone was against the war, of course. In fact, lots of people in Orange County supported it. There were weekly flag-waving events in downtown Brea in support of the war, for example.

The Patriot Act and The Security State

A special event in Fullerton involved a discussion of the infamous PATRIOT Act, which allowed increased government surveillance of US citizens. It was a debate of sorts between FBI agent Louis Flores and ACLU representative Stephen Rhode.

“Flores stated that the public should have no concern about the Bureau snooping into our buying or reading habits, because they don’t have time to monitor millions of people,” the Observer reported. “We should consider the FBI like our friendly local policeman who helps us when our home is broken into.”

Meanwhile Rohde, “expressed the hope that we may find a way to be both safe and free. He also reminded the audience that the struggle between power and civil rights is not a new problem in America…Rohde reviewed some of the historical precedents in which the USA has overreacted to threats by clamping down on civil rights” such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

Pollution

In industrial pollution news, the oil companies responsible for creating Fullerton’s first Superfund site, the McColl Dump Site, were now given responsibility for monitoring the site’s pollution. What could go wrong?

In other industrial pollution news, further clean-up of the former Hughes Aircraft site (now Amerige Heights Shopping Center and housing development) was needed.

“The last groundwater monitoring tests completed before construction began in 2000 showed that 1,1- DCE and 1,4- dioxane had reached the regional drinking water aquifer underlying the property,” the Observer reported. “The chemical has recently shown up in tests of the nearest drinking water well located at the Fullerton Airport which has been temporarily shut down. The report states that hazardous waste, substances or constituents have migrated or may migrate from the Facility into the environment through air, soil, and groundwater.”

And in other industrial pollution news, “A neighborhood bordering the new Paseo Park currently under construction on Truslow in Fullerton also lies in the pathway of possible problems related to the removal of toxins from a former gas manufacturing site at 144 W. Walnut, owned by Sempra Energy.”

“The site has been found to contain a series of chemicals called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Some of the chemicals at the site have been found to be of the cancer-causing variety,” the Observer reported. “Following its mandate to protect the public, the California EPA Department of Toxic Substance Control has accepted Sempra Energy’s voluntary plan to remove the top five feet of soil from the entire site…The site is set to become a city parking lot for the new Paseo Park being constructed on Truslow…No testing within the new park boundaries has been done although it does lie just south of the factory and may have offered an attractive dumping ground at one time.”

What could go wrong? Stay tuned.

Saving Coyote Hills

The Friends of Coyote Hills was trying to save Fullerton’s last largest natural open space from development.

Meanwhile, “Chevron’s Pacific Coast Homes (PCH), applicant for the West Coyote Hills development, is launching an expensive advertisement and PR blitz to try to influence public support and win the support of Fullerton’s planning commission and city council. This is evident in their attendance of many events of late, the launching of a website, and the mass mailing of a newsletter,” the Observer reported. “The Fullerton community beware. Behind all this is a PR firm, Laer Pierce and Associates (LP&A), that specializes in helping developers win community and government support through slick advertising and other tricks of the trade.”

The Friends of Coyote Hills were critical of the Chevron proposal of 760 homes to be built on West Coyote Hills: “They have cited concerns of water quality and supply, traffic, overcrowding of schools, long-term economic burden for residents, and the destruction of a valuable natural habitat for a federally endangered species, the California gnatcatcher.”

“Instead of developing the property with more homes, The Friends of Coyote Hills propose a 510-acre public nature park and reserve that can be enjoyed in perpetuity by all,” the Observer reported.

According to Chevron’s web site, “Protecting the earth’s natural resources is as important to ChevronTexaco as providing the energy sources so essential to improving our quality of life. Beyond meeting the world’s energy needs, our goal is to be recognized and admired everywhere for having a record of environmental excellence.”

The Observer took Chevron’s claims of “environmental excellence” to task, pointing out decades of industrial pollution: “The US Environmental Protection Agency considers Chevron a PRP for 49 hazardous waste Superfund sites (including, along with other oil companies, the McColl Dump Superfund Site here in Fullerton adjacent to West Coyote Hills),”

In an article for the Observer, Angela Chen Lindstrom of the Friends of Coyote Hills questioned the Environmental Impact Report created by Chevron.

“Chevron’s consultants are performing the analysis and drafting the report, and then turning it over to the city for review and approval. The quality of the independent analysis is questionable,” Lindstrom wrote. “There is much at stake here. Though the lines between for-profit and public agencies have been blurred, it’s not hard to see who stands to gain the most from the development of West Coyote Hills. Times are good for Chevron.”

“To date, less than three acres of the 510-acre site has been cleaned-up. The report states that there was probably a sump (area where oil waste is dumped) related to each oil well on the property. There were over 400 oil wells,” the Observer reported.

A community meeting on Chevron’s proposal for West Coyote Hills drew a large crowd of around 400 interested residents.

“Many faces here are the same ones that attended the hearings on Amerige Heights where the City stood by as the developer presented us with pretty pictures of tree lined pedestrian friendly streets and darling houses,” Dede Ginter said. “Instead we got less than 5% green space, discount stores, cramped streets and houses within spitting distance of each other. My neighbor asked me if I thought we could trust Chevron. That is not the question, the question is can we trust our own City. No one is listening.” 

Saving the Fox Theater

Fullerton Heritage, the group responsible for gathering petitions of 12,000 individuals interested in saving the Fox Theater, handed over responsibilities for saving the Fox to the newly formed Fullerton Historic Theatre Foundation.

“Created by a group of concerned citizens nearly two years ago, the Fullerton Historic Theatre Foundation was formed specifically to achieve the acquisition, stabilization, restoration and reactivation of Chapman’s Alician Court Theatre; now known as the Fox,” the Observer reported. “It has sponsored a series of public presentations aimed at educating the community about the artistic, architectural, historical and economic values of the unique structure. The Foundation, which has created a sophisticated business plan for the restoration and eventual operation of the theatre and its related properties, has also formed alliances with regional and national organizations and individuals prominent in historical restoration issues.”

In other arts & culture news, a new business called Plush Design Lab opened downtown at 207 N. Harbor Blvd.

“The European style Internet cafe features Italian sodas, coffees, teas, Bobas, softdrinks, various energy drinks, desserts & snacks in a cool, contemporary high-tech environment,” the Observer reported. “The space promises to be popular with CalState & Fullerton College students, artists, writers, actors, musicians, hi-techs and anyone looking for a non-alcoholic alternative gathering place. Poetry jams are already taking place as well as open mic nights and soon the Plush will host art shows.”

A new mural next to Rutabegorz in a new downtown park next to the Museum Plaza was painted with the guidance of Fullerton artist Katherine England.

“Thirty students with representatives from each of Fullerton’s high schools worked on the colorful and bold design inspired by the art of Peter Max,” the Observer reported. “The new park located on land that was once considered for parking or yet another office building, adds a refreshing green space to downtown Fullerton.”

And and arts collective called OOTS began organizing art shows in Fullerton.

Transportation

In transportation news, a proposed light rail train called the Centerline was facing push back from some quarters.

“Following a 3.5 hour period of testimony from 75 members of the public, including the Mayor of Fullerton, Councilman Dick Jones, and 7 other Fullertonians, the Board spent about one hour of discussion before reaching a 9 to 2 vote in favor of continuing the Centerline Project,” the Observer reported. “Public comments were so overwhelmingly in favor of continuing the project that it is difficult to understand how the two “No” votes were possible.”

Chris Norby, former Fullerton Councilman, recently elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, voted against the majority.

“According to very recent survey findings from Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Public Policy, in partnership with the Orange County Business Council, some 55% of Orange County residents would – if the question were put before them today – vote in favor of building the light rail line, as proposed, from Santa Ana to John Wayne Airport,” the Observer reported.

Ray Young, professor of geography at CSUF, author of Commuting in Orange County, a report published by the Cal State Fullerton Center for Demographic Research (December 2002) wrote, “It is noteworthy that the public is more receptive to a light rail future than to bus system expansion. That may be linked to the prospect of greater speed as well as the novelty of a rail starter line, linking major activity nodes and job centers in the county.” 

The light rail concept was approved as part of measure M funding initiative in 1990, a process that led to substantial freeway widenings and bus line improvements.

The Infamous Florentine Sidewalk Incursion

In 2003, Downtown Fullerton was experiencing a “renaissance” of sorts, with more restaurant/bars opening up, transforming a once sleepy downtown into a popular drinking/party destination.

In the midst of this, the Florentine family, owner of a proposed bar on the northeast corner of Harbor and Commonwealth, did a questionable thing by encroaching on a sidewalk with a built-out concrete patio with support from city bureaucrats.

“Approval to build a 6-inch high patio that later turned out to include a 4-foot high concrete block wall enclosing a wide swath of city sidewalk on Commonwealth at Harbor in downtown Fullerton was given to “Intimate Inns of California, Inc., doing business as Florentine’s Downtown Bar and Grill,” unanimous City Council vote May 6, 2003,” the Observer reported.

Although a sign and two trees were removed for the construction and the sidewalk was reduced from 12-feet to 6-feet wide, Florentine’s application was not sent to the Planning Commission for discussion. 

“The Agenda information sheet No. 14, presented to Councilmembers, the public and the press, failed to include diagrams, figures, or even a description of the concrete block wall running down the middle of the sidewalk,” the Observer reported. “Instead Council was shown an artist’s rendering which was not made available for publication and was not included in the Agenda backup information.”

Asked why the issue did not come before the Redevelopment Design Review Committee for review, City Manager Chris Meyer said “The RDRC has no political power but acts only as an advisory body to the City Council.”

“The sidewalk [should] be returned to its 12 ft. width and that the two trees removed be replanted to provide shade,” the Observer stated.

Meanwhile, Cameron Irons, president of the Downtown Fullerton Restaurant Association argued that the encroachment was a net win for Fullerton.

“Tony and Joe Florentine have been longtime business owners in our beautiful Downtown. They put their money and their efforts into creating a business in an area that had been woefully neglected by the city for many years,” Irons wrote. “The current renaissance in the downtown area is occurring for many reasons, one of which is the dedication and hard work of our Downtown restaurant owners. If those who complain about the Florentine’s patio feel that a wide sidewalk is more important than the increased success of a local business they only have to move a few blocks North to Brea where those city leaders have chosen to bulldoze historic areas so that restaurant patios can exist with wide sidewalks.”

Local Politics

In California politics, Democratic governor Gray Davis was recalled and Republican movie star/body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him. Oh, California.

Closer to home, a new political advocacy group called Neighbors United for Fullerton (NUFF) was formed. This group sought to elect liberal candidates.

The Grocery Store Workers Strike

When large grocery store chains sought to cut workers’ wages, thousands of workers went on strike throughout Southern California, including Fullerton.

“When the United Food and Commercial Workers Union called the strike against Vons and Pavilions, both owned by Safeway, grocery chains owned by Albertson’s and Ralph’s locked out their workers even though they were not part of the strike,” the Observer reported. “Now picket lines have been placed at all 859 markets and customers are finding alternative places to shop.”

“Over 2000 marched from Albertson’s headquarters to the Albertson’s on Raymond in Fullerton,” the Observer reported. “The parking lot in front of the store served as a gathering place for workers, their families, members of supporting unions and other supporters of the 2-month long workers strike against grocery chains attempting to cut wages and benefits.”

Housing and Homelessness

A new housing unit for homeless families, called New Vista, broke ground in Fullerton, to be built and run by Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services, now called Pathways of Hope.

The new units will be important in attacking the “plague of homelessness which afflicts Orange County,” said FIES President Jerry Brown. Between 26,000 and 30,000 people are homeless every night in Orange County.

Education

“Since 1985, the Fullerton School District has supported the D.A.R.E. Program and established a great relationship with the Fullerton Police Department,” the Observer reported. “This year’s DARE Officer Tony Cicciarelli teaches once a week for 10 weeks at 22 school sites in Fullerton.”

Based on numerous studies, the D.A.R.E. program was ineffective.

Deaths

CSUF professor Willis McNelly passed away.

“His close relationships with Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein, led to the creation of Cal State Fullerton’s renowned Science Fiction Collection housed in the university’s Poliak Library,” the Observer reported.

Stay tuned for top stories from 2004!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

The Fullerton Observer newspaper was formed in 1978 by Ralph and Natalie Kennedy and friends to provide a more progressive counterbalance to the more conservative Fullerton News-Tribune and Orange County Register. Back then, Orange County (including Fullerton) was dominated by Republicans, and the Observer crew were definitely in the minority. The Fullerton Public Library has digital archives of the Observer stretching back to 1979. I am in the process of reading over these archives and creating a year-by-year summary of top stories. Here are some top stories from 2002.

Hate Crimes on the Rise After 9/11

“This year hate crimes and incidents show an increase of 33% compared to last year,” the Observer reported. “This increase has disproportionately affected the Middle Eastern and Muslim communities who faced the brunt of irrational and hateful attacks in the wake of the September 11, 2001 tragedy on the East Coast.”

International Law? U.S. Says ‘No Thanks’!

“Despite strong opposition from the Bush Administration, the International Criminal Court became a reality on July 1st,” the Observer reported. “The World Court will try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that the accused person’s home government has refused to try in a reasonable manner. Sixty-nine countries including all European allies, have ratified the treaty so far. ‘Justice will be strengthened and accountability will be reinforced,’ said Richard Dicker head of the-International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch.”

The Fullerton Indian Mascot Debate

Residents, students, school administrators, and Native American activists were debating whether the Fullerton Union High School Indian mascot was offensive and should be replaced.

“The use of Native American mascots by educational institutions has come under increasing fire by civil rights groups and American Indians as the latter try to achieve equal status as an identifiable ethnic group within American society,” the Observer reported. “In spite of the goodwill of many Americans and Fullertonians, many individuals resist change and continue their ignorant ways. Such is the case with the Fullerton Joint Union High School District…Native American mascots perpetuate inappropriate, inaccurate, and harmful understandings of living people, their cultures, and their histories. These mascots reduce and belittle living Native Americans to a series of cliches and racist stereotypes overshadowing the complexities of Native American experiences and identities.”

“Native American mascots are constructed from the imaginations of the dominant society and as such are perceived as racist inventions by the Native American community,” anthropology professor E. Sky Scott wrote in the Observer. “Much of the stereotyping of Native Americans is used as a foundation upon which many Americans build their glorified national identity…These are symbols of dominance and superiority and expose feelings of entitlement not only to native land and resources but also to religious and cultural identities.”

Meanwhile, some older Fullertonians supported keeping the Indian mascot.

“FUHS should be proud to have the Indian as a representative of their school. It was an Indian who befriended the first settlers to this country. They gave thanks to God on the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts many years ago. If you would like to change the use of Indian representing FUHS, perhaps you should take a step further and eliminate Thanksgiving,” FUHS alumni Bill Case wrote.

Meanwhile the US Commission on Civil Rights called for an end to the use of Native American images and team names by non-Native schools.

Fullerton Union High School (FUHS) officials conducted a meeting between themselves, selected students, and four speakers regarding the mascot.

School administrators were reluctant to make any changes.

“High School District Superintendent Escalante believes that Fullerton citizens don’t really care about the issue,” the Observer reported. “I get 20 letters in support of keeping the mascots to every one asking that they be removed,” he said at a Board meeting.

Boardmember Marilyn Buchi agreed, “Most of the protestors are from outside of the community. It’s not really an issue here. Changes are being made though at a slower pace than what the opposing groups want.”

Indeed, it would take another two decades for FUHS to change its mascot, as a result of a state law. As of 2026, the mascot is the Red Hawks.

Some also felt that the Sonora High School “Raider” mascot, a depiction of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, was also a disrespectful caricature and should be replaced.

Saving Coyote Hills: Oil vs. Soil

Facing a development proposal from Chevron, the Friends of Coyote Hills was working to preserve the 510 acres as open space.

“My responsibility is to provide value to the shareholders of ChevronTexaco, while serving the company and community in an appropriate and balanced manner,” a representative of Chevron wrote to the Observer. “I believe our proposed development plan accomplishes this.”

Chevron’s plan included housing development and preservation of about half of the open space; however, this figure was not entirely accurate.

“The developer disclosed that the ‘preserved 280 acres’ will be cleared of all ‘non-native plants, including trees,’ and there was not a concise plan to manage wildlife while the land is being ‘cleared’ i.e. bulldozed. In essence it sounds like most open space will be bulldozed and revegetated,” Kathleen Shanfield wrote in the Observer.

Meanwhile, a new Vista Park opened in East Coyote hills.

“The City’s newest park (Mountain View Park) is located at the northwest corner of State College Boulevard and Bastanchury Road,” the Observer reported. “The two-acre park offers sweeping views of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles County. Amenities include meandering walkways, picnic tables and benches, extensive landscaping, drinking fountain, safety lighting and on-site parking. The facilities are accessible to all. The cost of the park project was approximately $1-million with funding coming from developer fees paid by Van Daele Communities, which is constructing a development just west of the park.”

Still Saving the Fox

Fullerton’s other decades-long preservation effort, saving the historic Fox Theater, also continued.

“The Fullerton Historic Theatre Foundation has been meeting biweekly since last September in an attempt to understand and, we hope, alter the present status of the Fox Fullerton Theatre,” Chuck Estes wrote. “We are evolving new strategies to move the situation forward toward the theatre’s eventual restoration. Our vision for the Fox is a multi-use facility incorporating film, live theatre, concerts, community events and meetings.”

According to architectural historian Alfred Willis, “The Fox Fullerton Theatre is one of the finest surviving buildings designed by Raymond Kennedy, one of the most original architects in Los Angeles in the 1920’s. Kennedy worked for the prominent construction firm of Meyer & Holler whose designers perfected an innovative type of theatrical house: the courtyard theatre, in which an atmospherically decorated forecourt took the place of an interior lobby. Unfortunately, not many of them survive, and the Fox Fullerton is the ONLY survivor themed in Kennedy’s own favorite style, the Italian Baroque.” 

What was needed to save the Fox, as well as Coyote Hills, was money, and lots of it. A Fox Historic Theater Foundation was created to receive donations.

Arts & Culture

In 2002, Fullerton was still hosting an annual arts and culture event called “A Night in Fullerton,” a tradition that stretched back to 1964.

“A Night in Fullerton is the city’s annual celebration of the Arts, featuring an evening of free music, art, drama and dance programs at numerous locations throughout the community,” the Observer reported. “The late artist Florence Arnold and other citizens began the celebration years ago. The festival attracts thousands of people each year at the many venues.”

The Observer includes a feature on one of the most unique restaurants in town–El Fortin, which serves authentic Mexican food from Oaxaca, with its various rich moles, huge handmade tortillas, fried crickets, and unique cheese.

El Fortin is located at 700 East Commonwealth Avenue. 

No Room at the School

Some schools in Fullerton were feeling the impacts of increasing enrollment.

“The children of the baby-boomers have arrived, and “Tidal Wave II,” (the nickname CSU administrators have given them) are swamping the California State University System, and especially the Fullerton campus,” the Observer reported. “During the 1990s enrollment increased enormously systemwide, where it rose some 19% from about 320,000 students to more than 380,000. Cal State Fullerton, with a 30% growth rate since 1994, has experienced an even more significant expansion of its student population. That translates to some 8000 more students and a current enrollment of about 30,000.”

Accommodating the influx of college students meant an increasing reliance on lower-paid, part-time (adjunct) instructors.

“According to the faculty union, the California Faculty Association (CFA), between 1995 and 2001, tenure-track faculty positions grew by an anemic 2.27% while non-tenure track positions rose by 119.44%,” the Observer reported. “Moreover, these “part-timers” are increasingly becoming permanent fixtures on campus, rather than temporary instructors, and that trend will intensify with the new tentative contract between the CFA and the CSU administration.”

Meanwhile, those underpaid part-timers had formed a union, and were fighting for better pay, benefits, and working conditions.

“Presently, part-time faculty at Fullerton and Cypress Colleges make less than 50% of what full-timers receive for teaching the same class,” the Observer reported.

Industrial Pollution: The Gift That Keeps on Taking

Reading over local newspapers from the 1950s, I note how local leaders often spoke enthusiastically about new industrial plants locating in Fullerton because of the economic benefit. Five decades later, Fullertonians were having to deal with a consequence of industrial activity–pollution.

Oil companies were ordered to pay for cleanup costs of Fullerton’s first Superfund site–the McColl dump site where refinery waste had been dumped back in the 1940s and 50s, polluting the soil and groundwater.

“The court ruled that the oil companies are responsible and must pay for the nearly $100 million dollar clean up costs of the McColl Dump Site,” the Observer reported. “The companies argued that because the dumping was a byproduct of the production of jet fuel for the US military during WWII that the government should be held responsible. The court ruled that the oil companies were responsible for the clean-up costs.”

According to the Observer, “In the 1950s the waste sumps were ‘capped’ by the oil companies to allow for residential development nearby, even though approximately 100,000 cubic yards of hazardous waste remained. The effort to clean-up McColl Dump was a long, citizen-driven battle dating from 1978 when nearby residents began reporting illnesses and bad smells oozing from the site.”

Another site of pollution was a former Manufactured Gas Plant site located at 144 W. Walnut, owned by Sempra Energy, which in 2002 was in the process of being cleaned up.

“Tests have shown high levels of ten chemicals, seven of which are probable human carcinogens within the first five feet below ground surface, with the highest readings at one foot below ground,” the Observer reported. “As a result the company has proposed removing the top five feet. The Department of Toxic Substance Control is awaiting the submission of a work plan from Sempra.”

And a third site of industrial pollution was the former Hughes Aircraft facility in west Fullerton.

“The most recent tests in April 2002 of MW-16 and P-7 have shown that contamination is continuing to be a problem at the site, probably due to NAPL in the soil creating an ongoing source of chemical leaching into the perched zone and then into the aquifer,” the Observer reported. “This situation has been going on for over a year since clean-up efforts were halted for construction of Amerige Heights Shopping Center. No restart of remediation has been ordered by the DTSC because Raytheon is still on a “voluntary” clean-up plan but that could change at some point if Raytheon is seen as non-cooperative.”

Despite a breakdown of communication between Raytheon and and California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substance Control, construction of housing was occurring.

“Remediation efforts to remove chemicals from the aquifer beneath the property were halted ‘temporarily’ in order to build the shopping center but were never restarted,” the Observer reported. “The EPA request to Raytheon to ‘characterize’ the extent of the contamination was also never accomplished.”

Eventually, the California EPA Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) requested that deed restrictions on the site “include a statement that would allow access by the DTSC for future remediation and added ‘Deed restrictions prohibiting the extraction and/or use of contaminated groundwater from the site will be imposed on the entire property.’”

Meanwhile, Fullerton School District Board unanimously approved the purchase of a new school site at Amerige Heights. This school would eventually be called Fisler Elementary School.

Public Transit in the OC: The Little Engine That Couldn’t

A proposed light rail connecting Irvine to Santa Ana got approval from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).

“With almost 500,000 people residing 2 miles or less from the proposed alignment, we think the light rail can be a major success in providing mobility for central Orange County,” said OCTA CEO Art Leahy. 

“Meanwhile a group of critics is working to place an initiative on the November ballot to stop the Centerline,” the Observer reported. “This group seems to have adopted the belief that transportation funding for anything other than roads is a big mistake.”

The Centerline would eventually be abandoned.

Local Politics: Republicans Only, Please

In 2002, Don Bankhead, Shawn Nelson, and Mike Cleseri were elected to City Council. They were all white male Republicans.

Cleseri defeated incumbent Democrat Jan Flory by running a negative campaign against her.

“He created a villainous, tax-raising, congestion-creating Flory and then ran as the Anti-Flory,” Vince Buck wrote in the Observer. “This dichotomy was wrong on both accounts. The criteria he used to paint Flory as evil was misleading, if not patently false; and there is no evidence to suggest that Wilson will be any different from Flory on those issues.”

One of Wilson’s campaign mailers claimed that Flory was against strong anti-prostitution laws, implying she was for prostitution.

The candidates supported by the police and fire unions, who spent nearly $40,000 on the election, all won. 

In Memoriam

Long time Fullertonian Ada-Jane Greening passed away. Greening was involved in a lot of community groups in Fullerton.

“Starting immediately after her arrival in Fullerton in 1951 with husband and their 4-year-old son, A-J became an active member of the Fullerton Co-op Pre-school parents group,” her obituary stated. “During the ensuing four decades she became an active participant in the YWCA, the United Nations Association of Orange County, the League of Women Voters of North Orange County, the Art Alliance at CSUF, and Fullerton Beautiful, among other groups, rising to the presidency of each…The most consuming involvement for 25 years was her association with the Fullerton Public Library. Beginning in 1965, as a LWV observer at Library Board meetings, she became a catalyst for the funding and construction of a new library building. She was appointed to the Library Board in 1975, serving for fifteen years, five years as president. She resigned in 1990, for health reasons.”

William B. Langsdorf, founding president of California State University, Fullerton, died at his home in Corona del Mar. He was 93. 

“Langsdorf served as president of Cal State Fullerton from 1959 to 1970, during the time the 225-acre campus was transformed from a vast orange grove into one of the most populous campuses in the California State University system,” his obituary stated. “Mirroring the explosive growth of Orange County, enrollment grew from 452 students to more than 15,000 during his presidency.”

Stay tuned for top stories from 2003!

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.

9/11

The biggest national news story of 2001 was the terrorist attack of 9/11.

“Over 100 locals gathered on Friday, September 14th at the Hillcrest Park flagpole for a candlelight vigil in memory of those killed in the September 11th attacks,” the Observer reported.

Observer writers offered some fairly nuanced assessments of the meaning of the attack, and what our response might be.

“The major question posed by these events is how can a liberal, democratic state such as ours, contend with the threat of terrorism while maintaining our own commitment to justice and democratic ideals?” one writer wrote.

“We’re flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that’s Bin Laden’s program,” wrote Tamim Ansary. “That’s exactly what he wants. In the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?”

The California Energy Crisis

California’s experiment in energy deregulation was proving to be a complete disaster, resulting in an energy crisis that saw prices go up, not down, and rolling blackouts throughout the state.

In response, the state legislature approved a massive bailout of Edison. Not everyone was happy.

“Edison pushed deregulation and reaped its rewards while sticking all the risks on the residential and small business ratepayers,” Harvey Rosenfield, President of The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, said.

The City of Fullerton implemented a number of measures designed to help curb electrical usage in City facilities and programs.

“After the utilities profited from the deregulation scheme, the private power generators began, last summer, to price gouge and achieved unprecedented earnings,” the Observer reported. “Throughout the deregulation debacle, however, consumers have received no benefits, despite the statutory promise of a 20% rate reduction in the 1996 legislation. Indeed, as a result of deregulation consumers have suffered through the state’s first rolling blackouts since World War II and the largest rate increases in California history.”

Light Rail Fail

Meanwhile, a proposed light rail system stretching from Irvine to Fullerton called CenterLine continued to hit political snags. In the 1990s, Orange County politics was still dominated by conservative Republicans who felt the role of government should be as small as possible. This meant minimal public investment in things like public transit, housing, etc.

The preferred solution to most things was the private sector, deregulation, etc. See above energy crisis for how well that worked out with electricity.

OCTA put the project on hold. “Unfortunately, the voices of the critics and NIMBYs were heard louder than the supporters, which prompted the shelving,” the Observer reported.

“All we’re doing is putting band aids on bleeding arteries,” said David Fleming, a former transportation commissioner, “freeway projects are just a band-aid on gridlock.” 

Meanwhile, a local group called Transit Advocates of Orange County was organized to support the Centerline and other public transit projects.

The mayors of Irvine, Santa Ana, and Costa Mesa thought the Centerline could be re-worked on a smaller scale, and supported more “study.”

“The original concept of the Centerline called for a 27-mile, $2.3-billion line from Fullerton to Irvine, a concept that collapsed for lack of support from some of the cities along the line,” the Observer reported. “The shortened version is proposed to cover approximately 20 miles at a cost of $ 1.4-billion, to run from the Irvine Transportation Center to the Santa Ana Transportation Center serving the Irvine Spectrum, medical center, business complexes, John Wayne Airport and South Coast Plaza.”

This, too, would ultimately die. This is, in part, why public transit in Orange County is so shitty–why it can take an hour and a half to get to the beach from Fullerton, on a bus.

A Slow-Gestating Housing Crisis

By the 1990s, Fullerton was becoming more and more built out, and housing production had slowed significantly. Those with single family homes were often determined to maintain the “character” of their neighborhoods, even if that meant preventing newer, higher density construction of housing. This led to a predictable shortage, and ever escalating housing prices. This, combined with political leaders unwilling to invest in affordable housing, and you get the slow-gestating housing crisis that we have today.

“Fullerton’s December 2000 Draft Housing Report proves a strong need for very-low and moderate housing. At the same time the report indicated that housing for upper income families dominated new construction and is expected to continue to dominate housing objectives through year 2005,” the Observer reported. “It appears that no new homes for those earning less than $55,700 per year are planned for Fullerton.”

Listening to homeowner interests, City Council voted unanimously “to join in a lawsuit launched by Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) against the Department of Housing and Community Development” to block state-suggested affordable housing goals. 

Homelessness

A predictable consequence of escalating housing costs was the persistent problem of homelessness.

“According to a recent County survey, there are more than 18,000 homeless in Orange County on any given night,” the Observer reported.

“Statistics show that 65% of Orange County’s homeless work. With escalating rents, many individuals and families have literally been priced out of the housing market.”

In 2001 there were 52 shelters in OC providing 2,374 homeless beds.

“Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services (FIES) indicates it is turning away an average of 70 homeless persons per day,” the Observer reported. “Based on information from shelter providers, there is a need for at least 70 additional beds in Fullerton.”

During the cold weather months, the National Guard Armory in Fullerton was used as a homeless shelter, although guests there were subject to pretty strict rules, and were bussed out of the area early in the morning. 

Pollution on the Former Hughes Site?

Despite concerns of lingering industrial pollution on the former Hughes Aircraft site in Fullerton, city council unanimously approved a massive housing/commercial development that today is called Amerige Heights. The Observer continued to report on findings of pollution on the site.

“As pressure from the developer LSF II Suncal and the 20-billion dollar Raytheon company, continues to push forward construction of the ‘Amerige Heights’ housing and commercial project the CalEPA Department of Toxic Substances Control has released several reports indicating further investigation and remediation of the property is needed. The Regional Water Quality Control Board has concurred with the CalEPA conclusions,” the Observer reported. “Unfortunately both companies are resisting further investigation of the contaminate source.”

Meanwhile the California EPA Department of Toxic Substances Control approved a preliminary environmental report on a proposed Amerige Heights Elementary School site located on the former Hughes Aircraft Company property on Malvern. Today, this is called Fisler Elementary School

“The company tested for various substances that plague other parts of the property and found that the 10-acre site held no threat to human health,” the Observer reported. “DTSC determined that no further environmental investigation or cleanup of the parcel is required.”

A treatment system failure resulted in over 5-million gallons of water “with 55-parts-per-billion of TCE being accidentally injected into the aquifer June 2001. The allowed limit for this chemical in drinking water is 5-parts-per-billion.”

Raytheon was fined a paltry $3000 fine for violating TCE limits required in its waste discharge agreement at 651 N Gilbert Street in Fullerton. 

Tres Sheep & Saving the Fox

The Fullerton Chamber of Commerce launched a PR campaign to get 50 artists to paint large sheep that would be displayed downtown. Why sheep? Because one of Fullerton’s earliest residents, Domingo Bastanchury, was a sheep rancher before he got into citrus.

“Each Sheep, Ewe or Lamb will be decorated, titled and entertain Fullertonians and visitors through April when the entire herd will be sold one by one at auction,” the Observer reported.

The saga to save the historic Fox Theater downtown from demolition and re-open it as a theater continued.

At a Downtown Business Association meeting Mayor Richard Jones was asked by a business woman, “About the Fox, anything happening there?” “Nothing, unless you people start a fire and burn it down,” the mayor replied. “And you,” nodding to the fire department chief, “should have a flat tire on the way there,” he advised. “We need to start over from scratch.”

“The City of Fullerton continues to take no responsibility for saving the Fox Theater, except that it has refused absentee owner Ed Lewis’s repeated requests for a demolition permit,” the Observer reported. “Citizens have signed petitions, but have not taken steps to establish a foundation to preserve the Fox, as citizens have done for the Balboa Theater in Newport Beach, and the Egyptian.”

Incensed by the callous remarks of Mayor Jones, Fullerton resident Chuck Estes began to get the ball rolling to start a nonprofit foundation to save the Fox. This would eventually become the Fox Theater Foundation.

A fountain in the Downtown Plaza opened.

Fullerton legend Leo Fender was honored with an exhibit at the Fullerton Museum Center.

“Fender, who perfected the electric guitar which led to the musical revolution still reverberating around the world today is the focus of “A Shower of Brilliance: Leo Fender and His Electric Guitar,” the Observer reported

A mural, sponsored by CUFFS and the Fullerton Museum, was painted on the side of the Wilshire Parking Structure facing the Fullerton Museum Plaza.

The mural was designed and supervised by Matt Reynoso with the help of Fullerton High School students. 

“The mural spells out Fullerton and includes symbols representing parts of the city’s history such as ostriches, oranges, guitars, trains and a portrait of George Fullerton,” the Observer reported.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Downtown, on west Santa Fe, a possible Renaissance was occurring with the conversion of industrial buildings into restaurants/bars like Heroes and the Continental Room.

“West Santa Fe Avenue bordering the railroad tracks is going through some renovations including a soon-to-be-opened “Frank Sinatra” style bar called the Continental which has been under construction for the last year by owners of the Hub Cafe,” the Observer reported. “Presently the two block street is home to the Commonwealth Upholstery Shop, Elingson Aircraft Parts, Donald Duck Orange Juice Factory, a roofing company and a bunch of art studios. Wouldn’t it be fun if part of the plan included affordable warehouse style studios that would attract artists?”

In the early 2000s, downtown Fullerton underwent a fairly radical transformation from a quaint/sleepy one dominated by antique shops and vintage stores to one dominated by bars and nightclubs. While some welcomed (and sought to profit from) the change, others were not so thrilled.

Al Bushala, of the wealthy local Bushala family, wanted to create a dance club at 205-207 N. Harbor Blvd. that would be open from 4pm to 4am.

“My planned 5,800 square foot lounge is an exciting part of Downtown Fullerton’s emergence as a sophisticated entertainment destination. My proposed dancing venue at 207 North Harbor will help provide the synergy needed for a true downtown revival,” Bushala wrote in the Observer. 

In a counter-argument piece, another writer questioned the approval of the dance club.

“An appeal was filed on November 21 along with 20 letters from local residents and business owners opposing the matter,” the writer wrote. “Take a close look at what has become of Downtown Fullerton over the past few years. The proliferation of drinking establishments has brought about vandalism, graffiti, public urination, vomiting and an unruly atmosphere…This quaint, charming and family friendly area is in severe danger of becoming a seedy district with bars, adult-oriented shops and the like. It is important to preserve the integrity of Downtown Fullerton by rejecting the proposed night club.”

Saving Coyote Hills

Like the saga to save the Fox Theater, the saga to save Coyote Hills from development has been a decades-long struggle.

“Considered the last open space in Fullerton, the Coyote Hills property was oil well territory but is now home to many types of rare critters and plants including endangered species such as the California gnatcatcher,” the Observer reported.

The Friends of Coyote Hills, the group which has worked for decades to save Coyote Hills began hosting walking tours of a small part of the property open to the public.

Meanwhile, the owner of Coyote Hills, Chevron, was proposing a large development there.

“A plan to put 810 dwelling units in west Coyote Hills is a bad deal for nature and for the future, says naturalist Shawn Bert of Friends of Coyote Hills,” the Observer reported. “With annual revenues of more than $50 billion, the oil giant could well afford to make a donation of this 510 acres of land for conservation of nature. The canary in the coal mine is the California gnatcatcher. The proposed development would wipe out most of this endangered songbird on the 510 acres.”

Meanwhile, City Council voted to name a city-owned 72-acre parcel of Coyote Hills the Robert E. Ward Nature Preserve. Robert Ward was a former mayor who worked to preserve the land back in the 1970s.

Education

In education news, adjunct (part-time) faculty at Fullerton and Cypress colleges had created a union and were fighting to improve their pay and to receive health benefits.

“Part time teachers are paid $39 per hour while full time teachers are at $71 with full benefits for teaching the same class. Part-time faculty are not compensated for office hours and do not receive any medical benefits,” the Observer reported. “These and other grievances were aired recently in an on-going protest by part-time faculty angered by the district’s refusal to grant “part-timers,” who hold the same academic credentials and teaching responsibilities as their full-time counterparts, adequate pay and benefits. 

Maple School celebrated its full re-opening as a K-6 elementary school.

The majority-Latino Maple school was closed in 1972 as part of a desegregation plan. It partially re-opened in 1996 and fully re-opened in 2001.

To read a history of Maple School check out my article entitled “The Limits of Desegregation: a Story of Maple School.”

The Fullerton High School Mascot Debate

“American Indian Movement activists have announced that a resolution is being presented to the Fullerton Union High School District in regards to the use of the “Indians” mascot and terminology at Fullerton High School,” the Observer reported. “Asserting that the use of such slogans (ie: “Indians” or “Warriors”) and cartoonish depictions of the Native American at school sporting events is insulting and a misrepresentation of the Native culture. Local spokesman, Daniel Brook Chapin says that officials at Fullerton High have failed in promises to alter their current representation of the Native American and that demonstrations and petitions will continue until the school complies with removal of the mascot and terminology used at sports events.

The Indian mascot endured until this year, when the school was compelled by state law to change it. The new mascot is the Red Hawks.

Sage by the Side of the Road

In 2001, I remember there was this guy who would post up for days at major intersections with large signs with very cryptic messages. Here’s a photo of him with one of his signs.

Stay tuned for top stories from 2002!