I recently ran across an article that my father had saved from 1963. The magazine was Fortune and the article was about the history of the legal battles within the Irvine Family and the Corporation and how they were going to affect the fate of what was once the Irvine Ranch. What caught my attention was the article’s title photo: a view unfamiliar to most current OC residents, yet a fond memory for those of us that once lived in this blank canvas where sheep, cattle, orange trees and even cotton dominated the landscape. It is truly amazing to be reminded that once upon a time during my own lifetime that there was not a single community visible between East Bluff and Saddleback Mountain. We all now know how this story ended, but in 1963 this was just “88,000 Acres Waiting for the Dust to Settle.”-Seymore Freedgood
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 17:25:10 +0000