| Olive Through the Ages
Taming the river | Maps
and images
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When I initially started working on this essay about the
Santa Ana River, I was only going to cite important historical events
that occurred along the River. However, as I kept finding relevant information,
including the Works Progress Administration research paper: "A
History of Irrigation in Orange County," I continued writing. Months
later, I have a much lengthier essay than anticipated, filled with details
about the River's history and its usage in the Olive area up to present
times.
This educational journey began with a few personal visits to the Santa
Ana River near Olive and was enriched thanks to assistance and materials
provided by local historians. In particular, Gordon McClelland provided
several historical newspaper articles from Los Angeles Times
that give details about events pertaining to the usage and control of
the Santa Ana River during the late 1800s through the early 1920s when
the region was largely agricultural. My journey came full circle when
T.D. Hoffmann and I saw William Wendt's 1928 oil painting of the Santa
Ana River in the Santa Ana Canyon and later identified the location
of that site on a ride along the 91 (Riverside) Freeway. How much the
view of the River and Canyon has changed in the last 80 years. - Daralee
The Spanish encounter the River in Olive, initiate
irrigation
The Santa Ana River, the longest river in Southern California,
flows west through San Bernardino and Riverside Counties and then into
the Santa Ana Canyon in Orange County where it bends around Olive before
heading southwest, emptying into the Pacific Ocean between Huntington
and Newport Beaches. The river carved out the Santa Ana Canyon during
the last glacial period, and provided a source of water for indigenous
peoples for more than 9,000 years, up until the arrival of Europeans
in the Orange County region.
On July 28, 1769, the river was first encountered by non-indigenous
people when Governor Gaspár de Portolá's party of soldiers
and padres stopped in the Olive area while on their journey to Northern
California. Portolá's camp was met by friendly native people,
and the soldiers named the valley—and later its river—after
Saint Anne, since the party's arrival coincided with Saint Anne's Day.
Franciscan priest Father Juan Crespí described the river at Olive
as "a bed of running water" about 28 feet wide and 17 inches
deep, and the area as having "a great deal of good land which can
easily be irrigated." Cosmographer Miguel Costansó noted
the "beautiful river" and "many groves of willows and
very good soil all of which can be irrigated for a great distance."
Young Corporal José Antonio Yorba may have shared these thoughts
about the terrain, because years after he retired from the army he returned
to claim this land and establish a home in the area that would become
known as Olive. As the party continued on their journey, they crossed
the Santa Ana with great difficulty since the current was very swift.
But before the Yorba settlement would be established, other parties
passed through this yet unclaimed territory. In 1771, Father Junipero
Serra and his group of missionaries selected the Olive site along the
southern banks of the Santa Ana River as the desired location of the
fourth California mission to be named San Gabriel. However, hostile
encounters with local Gabrielinos drove them away. The party crossed
the river and headed north, founding Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
three years later in the area that we know as San Gabriel Valley.
On a journey to found San Francisco, Juan Bautista de Anza stopped in
San Gabriel, but having learned of an uprising of the natives that resulted
in the burning of the San Diego Mission and the murder of Father Luis
Jayme, Anza and members of his escort were ordered to San Diego to suppress
the rebellion. The relief party made their first camp on the southern
banks of the Santa Ana River near Olive on January 7, 1776.
In 1797 Sergeant Yorba, now in his early 50s, retired from the army
and returned to the Orange County region to settle with his family.
One of the first homes he built was in the Olive area. On July 1, 1810,
the Spanish governor of Alta California confirmed 62,512 acres for Rancho
Santiago de Santa Ana to Yorba and his nephew Juan Pablo Peralta. A
couple of years later, Yorba, then in his late 60s, founded the settlement
of Santa Ana Viejo (Old Santa Ana) just below the bend in the Santa
Ana River. He and his sons would be credited with beginning the first
irrigation system in the area.
The Yorbas lived in Old Santa Ana for several decades while the region
was under Mexican rule; Mexico having attained independence from Spain
in 1821. The year Yorba passed away, 1825, the Santa Ana River overflowed
and flooded the area where the family lived. About that time, Yorba's
eldest son Tomás built a dam further up the river in the Santa
Ana Canyon, and dug a lengthy canal from present day Imperial Highway
to the family property site in the Olive area. Yorba's youngest son
Teodocio also dug a canal circa the late 1830s on the southern side
of the river to irrigate his fields and vineyards. The canal started
about where present day Glassell Street begins and curved around Olive
towards Villa Park.
In 1846 the way of life in Southern California's ranchos was about to
come to an end with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. General
Stephen Watts Kearny, Commodore Robert Field Stockton, and 600 soldiers
of the "Army of the West" camped on the southern banks of
the Santa Ana River near Olive on January 6, 1847. They would engage
in combat with General Andrés Pico and his Californios at the
Battle of San Gabriel two days later. That night on the Yorba's property
in Old Santa Ana, the soldiers were kept awake by the Santa Ana Winds
howling through the Canyon. The outcome of the engagement in San Gabriel
resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848,
ending the War and Mexican rule in California. Two years later, California
attained statehood, and soon the Spanish and Mexican land grants in
California were being questioned by outside parties.
When the Santa Ana River overflowed in 1861 and 1862, the Yorbas' irrigation
ditches were destroyed. They dug a new ditch south of the Santa Ana
River, five feet wide, one foot deep, and three-and-a-half miles in
length. Following these flood years, two consecutive drought years devastated
the land, killing thousands of the Yorbas' cattle. In 1868 when the
land grant for Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was declared illegal, the
rancho was partitioned amongst the heirs of Yorba and Peralta with portions
of it sold to cover legal fees. Though in 1883 the title to Rancho Santiago
de Santa Ana would be granted in favor of the descendants of Yorba and
Peralta, by that time ownership of that land had been transferred to
several outside parties.
Americans pursue irrigation efforts, realize profits
from the River
The first American landowners in the Olive area who pursued
irrigating the land were Henry Watson, son Jonathan, and son-in-law
John M. Bush. In 1869 they purchased 6,000 acres from the Yorbas and
established the Bush and Watson ditch using Teodocio Yorba's old irrigation
ditch as a basis. The intake of the new ditch was set three miles further
upstream and the ditch was extended further south to irrigate their
alfalfa fields.
A year later lawyer Alfred B. Chapman, who received more than 16,000
acres of land at Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana as payment for his legal
services, and his legal partner Andrew Glassell, began widening and
extending the Yorba canal. When completed in 1871, the Chapman Canal
was 10 miles in length, four feet across at the bottom, and two-and-a-half
feet deep. Its intake began around present-day Weir Canyon Road and
from there the canal ran west along the edge of the canyon over to the
hill at Olive—then known as Burruel Point—where it headed
south, emptying into the reservoir which today is the lake at Eisenhower
Park.
In 1873 Chapman and Glassell were among members of the newly formed
Semi-Tropic Water Company that supplied water to landowners in the area.
Henry Watson also helped irrigation efforts in the region with the assistance
of Nathan Fletcher and Los Angeles Mayor James R. Toberman, extending
the Bush and Watson ditch further south to Charles P. Taft's groves
between Olive and Orange. By 1876 the Watsons had sold some of their
acreage in the Olive area to Toberman who would form Olive Tract a half
mile south of present day Olive Heights.
Landowners in the Olive, Orange, Santa Ana, and Tustin areas were demanding
more water than the Chapman Canal could provide. To accommodate their
growing needs, the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company (S.A.V.I. Co.)
was incorporated in July 1877 and co-existed alongside the Semi-Tropic
Company for several years. The S.A.V.I. Co. oversaw the enlargement
and extension of the canal they now called the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation
ditch that ran alongside Santa Ana Canyon Road. In 1876 this ditch was
15 miles long and 10 feet wide on the bottom, and had been blasted through
solid rock. Two wooden tunnels were constructed through Burruel Point
and completed in 1878, the longer of the two which emptied into the
reservoir, the present day pond at Eisenhower Park.
The location at Burruel Point where the S.A.V.I. tunnel was constructed
became a prime site for the flour mill that would be built in 1882 by
Thomas Dillin and sons on land leased by the S.A.V.I. Co. The mill operated
using water from the tunnel during summer months and steam power throughout
the remainder of the year. The Dillin Mill thrived beyond the founding
of Olive Heights in 1887, up until the second decade of the 20th Century.
Some of the grain processed at the mill was grown by local farmers and
some of it was imported.
The irrigation efforts established by S.A.V.I. Co. not only aided crops
producing grain processed by the mill, but also laid out the path for
the citrus industry that would give Orange County its name. Even as
early as January 10, 1882 Los Angeles Times enthusiastically
reported: "Santa Ana Valley is one of the most favored and delightful
places this world affords.... In the time of drought we can turn the
waters of the great Santa Ana river into our large, elegant ditch, and
supply the whole surrounding orchards and vineyards with abundance of
water: so we are no longer seriously affected by a dry year, if it should
come...."
As Olive and the surrounding area began developing more and more into
an agricultural region, control over the flow of the Santa Ana River
became increasingly important. On July 15, 1883, Los Angeles Times
announced: "On Thursday the Board of Directors of the Santa Ana
Valley Irrigation Company resolved to proceed at once to develop the
water in the bed of the Santa Ana river. All arrangements have been
perfected to make a pile dam, the location selected, and a force of
men is now at work, in charge of an engineer, changing the head ditch
to correspond with the location of the proposed dam...." On June
13, 1886, Los Angeles Times informed readers about irrigation
developments in Olive: "The canal, from the mill to the north end
of the Santa Ana river flume, is being concreted for a distance of about
1200 feet...."
The land boom hit Southern California the following year, and in 1889
Orange County was founded. By 1892 the S.A.V.I. Co. completed its concrete
tunnel at Olive, replacing the wooden tunnel. The irrigation channel,
touted by Los Angeles Times on April 10, 1892 as "the largest
conduit in the world," was an "open cement canal," five
feet deep, 11 feet across at the bottom, 26 feet across at the top,
724 feet in length, and six feet, nine inches in diameter in the open
space across the cylindrical section of the tunnel. "The company's
ditches and private ditches together measure more than 150 miles,"
the article continued. On May 5, 1899 Los Angeles Times reported
an agreement was filed between the S.A.V.I. Co. and Anaheim Union Water
Company to equally divide the water of the Santa Ana River for irrigation
purposes. For at least 15 years prior to this time, the two companies
had been independently serving farmers in the region. About 1910 the
S.A.V.I. Co. replaced the open ditches on the hill at Olive with concrete
pipes to prevent seepage of water into the ground.
Cyclical flood patterns emerge, aid in managing the
River
The Orange County Board of Supervisors began putting efforts
into managing the Santa Ana River. By the end of 1890 they invested
resources to prevent erosion of the western banks of the Santa Ana and
the loss of farmland. In 1913 the Board agreed to the construction of
a cement Jefferson Street (Tustin Avenue) bridge—across the river
at Olive—replacing the old wooden bridge. At that time, in the
early 1910s up until the mid-1950s, Olive's boundaries extended northeast
up to about Imperial Highway, and down south just past Taft Avenue.
The new bridge among others were tested on January 18, 1916 when the
Santa Ana River overflowed. Though the Jefferson Street bridge survived,
the cement bridge over Anaheim-Olive Road (Lincoln Avenue) in Olive
did not. On February 6, 1916 Los Angeles Times reported: "The
storms demonstrated that the new concrete bridges across the Santa Ana
River on the Anaheim-Olive Road and across the Santiago Creek at Tustin
avenue and Villa Park are too short to span the heaviest floods...."
The next paragraph of this article adds: "Over the county there
is a persistent call for the creation of a large flood control district.
Many are advocating making the district fit the boundaries of the county...."
On February 27 to March 3, 1938 a series of storms caused
the Santa Ana River to overflow, causing the deaths of 19 residents
and leaving 2,000 homeless. In Olive, though the Anaheim-Olive bridge
remained intact, the Santa Fe Railway bridge and the Jefferson Street
bridge were both damaged in what would be declared the worst flood in
Orange County in the 20th Century. Then 14-year-old Olive resident Flora
Burbank recalled 50 year later in an article published in the March
2, 1988 edition of the The Orange County Register: "I was
watching when the Jefferson Street bridge went down. It was very scary.
Wires were flipping around, trees were flowing down the river. The river
was coming way over the bank." The Prado Dam, authorized for construction
in 1936 and completed in 1941, has since helped to control the flood
plain.
The years of sufficient rainfall that began in 1937 lasted until 1944.
Then in 1945 Orange County began experiencing a lengthy drought. Olive
water consumers, who had been receiving water from the Southern California
Water company, were dissatisfied with their service. They took their
complaints to the Olive Improvement Association water committee in 1949,
requesting new water lines and additional pressure pumps. But for all
of Orange County in general, the groundwater basin sorely needed to
be replenished. The Orange County Water District (OCWD) that was established
in 1933 to ensure an adequate supply of quality water to local residents,
formed an agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California (MWD) to access water from the Colorado River. As a result
of this agreement, on October 19, 1956 Colorado River water flowed into
the Santa Ana River near Olive, carried via a newly-completed, 20-mile,
underground MWD pipeline that prevented the evaporation of water and
accumulation of silt as the water approached the Prado Dam.
In the late 1950s, real estate values soared in Orange County and the
citrus industry began winding down. Olive's boundaries gradually receded
as acres of groves were sold to developers and the land was annexed
to the cities of Orange and Anaheim. When the housing boom hit Orange
County in the early 1960s, the demand for water shifted from agricultural
to residential usage. The OC Board of Supervisors, OCWD, and Orange
County Flood Control District proposed several ideas for better flood
control and management of the River, but a lack of funding prevented
their plans from being implemented. The storms that arrived in early
1969 brought the River's water level to flood capacity. While the Olive
area did not suffer damages, other areas in the County were harmed,
though not as severely as in the flood of 1938.
As housing developments continued cropping up all over Southern California,
the network of highways and freeways expanded. During the 1960s when
the Riverside Freeway was constructed through the area of the Santa
Ana Canyon near Olive, portions of the freeway were built above flood
danger, and the Santa Ana River was confined for several miles within
a concrete channel. In the mid-1970s the closure of the S.A.V.I. Co.
signified the end of the agricultural era in Orange County, and the
continuance of a burgeoning urban population. Beginning in 1989 construction
began on a concrete channel for managing the River in Orange County.
Today the Santa Ana River in the Olive area remains confined to its
concrete channel and is kept under control. Due to the current four-year
drought in Southern California the riverbed is often dry, though the
storms of early 2010 briefly filled the channel with a swiftly flowing
stream of water. Standing on the banks alongside the River near Olive,
with its channel considerably widened and deepened in modern times,
it is difficult to imagine how the River looked in its natural state
when the first Europeans encountered it in 1769. In its current environment,
the old river that once flowed wildly and freely through the Santa Ana
Canyon and around the hill at Olive is now tame.
Sources: ProQuest Historical Newspaper Los Angeles Times
articles; "Olive Water Problem: Two Plans for Improved Water Service
Submitted for Olive Area," Santa Ana Register, December 12, 1949;
"Flood of 1938 hit OC hard, spurred dam," by John Westcott,
The Orange County Register, March 2, 1988; Vol. 2., The Historical Volume
and Reference Works: Orange County, Whittier, CA: Historical Publishers,
1963; A History of Irrigation in Orange County, by Cecil V. Robinson,
et al, Santa Ana, CA: Works Progress Administration, Southern California,
Orange County Research Group, 1936; Orange County Through Four Centuries,
by Leo J. Friis, Santa Ana, CA: Pioneer Press, 1965; Images of America:
Orange, by Phil Brigandi, Arcadia Publishing, 2008; José Antonio
Yorba I, by Arnold O. Dominguez, Orange County Historical Society, 1967;
Santa Ana River Guide: From Crest to Coast - 110 miles along Southern
California's largest river system, by Patrick Mitchell, Berkeley, CA:
Wilderness Press, 2006; "Ramon Peralta Adobe, 1871" brochure
by County of Orange Harbors, Beaches & Parks, 2007; "Rancho
Santiago de Santa Ana: The Grijalva, Yorba, Peralta, and Sepulveda Families"
article by Diann Marsh, from Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society
Web site, http://www.santaanahistory.com/articles/ranchos.html (accessed
February 2, 2009); "Santa Ana River Floods" from San Bernardino
County Flood Control District, http://www.sbcounty.gov/flood/Flood Planning/pages/
storm.htm (accessed February 2, 2009); Santa Ana River Watershed, http://www.sawpa.org/watershedinfo.html
(accessed December 23, 2009); Online Archive of California, http://www.oac.cdlib.org
(accessed March 7, 2010); American Society of Civil Engineers: Los Angeles
Section, http://www.ascelasection.org/ (accessed March 7, 2010); Orange
County Water District, http://www.ocwd.com (accessed March 7, 2010);
"Prado Dam" from NASA Earth Observatory, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=5195
(accessed March 9, 2010).
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