Tongva era Tongva people are indigenous to Anaheim's region of Southern California. Evidence suggests their presence
since 3500 BCE. The Tongva village at Anaheim was called
Hutuukuga. The village has been noted as one of the largest Tongva villages throughout
Tovaangar.
Native plants like
oak trees and
sage bushes were an important food source, as well as rabbit and
mule deer for meat. The village had deep trade connections with coastal villages and those further inland. and whose families had originated in
Rothenburg ob der Tauber,
Franconia in
Bavaria. After traveling through the state looking for a suitable area to grow grapes, the group decided to purchase a parcel from Juan Pacífico Ontiveros' large Rancho San Juan Cajón de Santa Ana in present-day
Orange County for $2 per acre. For 25 years, the area was the largest wine producer in California.
Anaheim's Chinatown German settlers traveled to San Francisco to recruit thirty Chinese laborers. Each Chinese laborer was compensated with a town lot, and these parcels later formed the spatial foundation of Anaheim’s early Chinatown. Helena Street and Clementine Street in West Anaheim, is also named after Helena Modjeska.
Early 20th century During the first half of the 20th century, Anaheim was a massive rural community dominated by orange
groves and the
landowners who farmed them. One of the landowners was Bennett Payne Baxter, who owned much land in northeast Anaheim that today is the location of Angel Stadium. He came up with many new ideas for irrigating orange groves and shared his ideas with other landowners. He was not only successful, he helped other landowners and businesspeople succeed as well. Ben Baxter and other landowners helped to make Anaheim a thriving rural community before the opening of
Disneyland transformed the city. A street along Edison Park in East Anaheim was also named after him. In 1924,
Ku Klux Klan members were elected to the Anaheim City Council on a platform of political reform. Up until that point, the city had been controlled by a long-standing business and civic elite that was mostly
German American. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support
prohibition laws of the day. The mayor himself was a former saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic, and self-serving. The Klansmen aimed to create what they saw as a model, orderly community, one in which prohibition against alcohol would be strictly enforced. At the time, the KKK had about 1,200 members in Orange County. The economic and occupational profile of the pro and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were the majority of their opponents; however, the opposition to the Klan also included many
Catholic Germans. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents, and many of the individuals in Orange County who joined the Klan did so out of a sense of civic activism. Upon easily winning the local Anaheim election in April 1924, the Klan representatives promptly fired city employees who were known to be Catholic and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer.
Mid to late 20th century Facilitation of new industries and suburban residents was possible due to the expansion of highways out of Los Angeles. Population dispersal efforts were made by the California's Division of Highways in order to subvert an easily targeted population cluster for atomic threats in the aftermath of World War II.
Fricker Fertilizer Factory Fire The Fricker Fertilizer Factory fire on June 21, 1985 has been considered to be one of the worst environmental disasters in Orange County. Working-class neighborhoods within a 2-mile radius in the cities of Fullerton, Anaheim, and Placentia were evacuated, resulting in a conservative estimate more than 7,500 evacuees and the closure of the 57 freeway for two days. Cleanup operations are recorded to have removed four tons of ammonium nitrate in order to avoid additional explosions. By the mid-1960s, the city's explosive growth would attract a
Major League Baseball team, with the
California Angels relocating from Los Angeles to Anaheim in 1966, where they have remained since. In 1980, the
National Football League's
Los Angeles Rams relocated from the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to the Angels' home field,
Anaheim Stadium, playing there until their relocation to
St. Louis in 1995. In 1993, Anaheim gained its own
National Hockey League team when
The Walt Disney Company founded the
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. In the 1990s, while Disneyland was undergoing a significant expansion project surrounding the construction of
Disney California Adventure Park, the city of Anaheim rebranded the surrounding area as the Anaheim Resort. The Anaheim Resort district is roughly bounded by the
Santa Ana River to the east, Ball Road to the north, Walnut Street to the west, and the
Garden Grove city limits to the south at Chapman Avenue, and Orangewood Avenue to the southwest. Attractions within the Resort District include the
Disneyland Resort, the
Anaheim Convention Center, the
Honda Center, Anaheim/Orange County Walk of Stars, and
Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Part of the project included removing the colorful neon signs and replacing them with shorter, more modest signs, as well as widening the arterial streets in the area into tree-lined boulevards. Further expansion included the purchase of the Fujishige Strawberry Farm in 1998 which sold for just under $100 million to Disney after nearly half a decade of financial proposals to the former owners. Today the former farm features a Hilton Hotel and is the site of the 'Toy Story' parking lot.
21st century In 2001, Disney's California Adventure (renamed
Disney California Adventure Park in 2010), the most expansive project in Disneyland's history, opened to the public. In 2007, Anaheim celebrated its
sesquicentennial. In July 2012,
political protests by Hispanic residents occurred following the
fatal shooting of two men, the first of whom was unarmed. Protesting occurred in the area between State College and East Street, and was motivated by concerns over police brutality, gang activity, domination of the city by commercial interests, and a perceived lack of political representation of Hispanic residents in the city government. The protests were accompanied by looting of businesses and homes. ==Geography==