Excursions Edify Visitors to County--and Residents : History Teacher’s Tour: A Class Act

Class was in session, and Prof. Louis Reichman had an attentive audience. On the left, the history teacher-turned tour guide said, was the Newport Beach hotel where Martha Mitchell revealed many of the secrets of Watergate. Over there on the right was Upper Newport Bay, where “there’s some pretty nasty things that shouldn’t be put in the water,” he said, referring to increased pollution in the bay.

Throughout Reichman’s observations, the more than 20 passengers on his tour bus took copious notes, strained for better views and nodded approvingly.

Reichman, who teaches U.S. history, government and California history at Fullerton College, has been moonlighting as an Orange County tour guide the past four years, running something he calls “The Orange County Experience.”

It’s a half-day excursion from Newport Beach to Mission San Juan Capistrano and back through what Reichman calls “The Irvine Empire.”

So as not to disappoint the traditional sightseers, he is quick to point out the homes of personalities and other notables. But the bulk of his spiel is facts culled from newspaper headlines and interviews with historians and Orange County movers and shakers.

“And I’m not above quoting responsible gossip,” he said. “But I always identify it.”

Passenger Trisha Cotnoir said Reichman “really has a lot of neat stories. He’s done a lot of research . . . . People like the personal stories about the people they’ve heard about.”

As the bus headed south Thursday along Coast Highway, Reichman rattled off the names of movie stars who populated Laguna Beach during the 1930s, such as Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr.

It was the film stars’ penchant for art, he noted, that attracted artists to Laguna Beach and gave the city its reputation as an art colony.

Pointing out the location for the opening sequence of “Gilligan’s Island” in Corona del Mar, Reichman broke out humming the theme song to the television show. Farther down the coast, he noted casually that Laguna Beach also was used as a location, for such movies as “Captain Blood” and “Robinson Crusoe.”

Along with the history of each of the areas on the tour, Reichman delivers several of what he calls “eat-your-heart-out stories,” such as James Irvine’s purchase of hundreds of acres of coastal land for 37 cents per acre. “And people thought he was a sucker,” Reichman said.

Many of his passengers are Orange County residents, he said, but he nevertheless surprises many of them with his information.

“I’ve learned a lot today,” said Ann Lanz of Orange. She and her husband, Bill, who accompanied her, have taken several tours of south Orange County and Reichman’s is, well, “beautiful,” she said.

The Lanzes are retired and spend much of their time going on tours, Bill Lanz said. “I knew some of this,” he said, “but not everything.”