Orange County’s 21 1/2-Mile History Lesson

Someone says name a street in New York City and you think of Broadway. In Paris it’s the Champs Elysees. In Rome it’s the Via Veneto.

And in Orange County, it’s Harbor Boulevard. Sorry, but it’s true.

Whatever your opinion of it, Harbor Boulevard is Orange County’s Main Street, running 21 1/2 miles through seven cities from the county line in La Habra to just short of the coast in Costa Mesa.

It is the street most familiar to tourists, who go home thinking Disneyland is the county seat. It is the street filmed by national TV crews when they want to show Orange County’s trashy side. It is where the police go when they want to rack up some prostitution arrests.

But it is also a subtle diorama of Orange County’s recent history. Harbor Boulevard reflects what Orange County was and is--a farmer-turned-factory-worker whose children lust for big-money elegance.

As much of Orange County’s population did, Harbor Boulevard comes from Los Angeles County. As two-lane Fullerton Road, it snakes down the hills of La Habra Heights through avocado and orange groves and past Spanish-style houses behind rock walls and swinging gates.

This bucolic aura extended nearly the length of the street in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when it was just a fast run to the beach. There were perhaps a half-dozen traffic lights and not many more cars along its entire length, which was usually only two lanes wide, sometimes three.

But nowadays, the country ends where Harbor Boulevard begins--exactly at the Orange County line. The street widens suddenly and spectacularly as it enters La Habra.

At first you see neat, tree-shaded neighborhoods to either side, but they disappear by the time you cross Whittier Boulevard. This was the build-up of Orange County of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s --discount stores and quickie-marts, factories and warehouses as far as you can see.

There is a slight interruption as you ascend into the low hills in Fullerton. The rural feel has been preserved there by and for the residents who can afford it. It takes money to buy into an Orange County housing tract. It takes even more to move out into what’s left of the country.

It’s all past in a flash, however, and you find yourself on a narrow Harbor Boulevard in the original downtown Fullerton. The efforts of a city to modernize an old, decaying commercial district are plain here.

There are still plenty of narrow, brick storefronts visible, their age emphasized by contrast with the nearby hyper-modern traffic signals installed for a progressive image. There are new buildings, too, although the only construction visibly under way is the remodeling of a carwash. Looking at downtown Fullerton, you aren’t sure which way the redevelopment tide is running.

Past the Riverside Freeway is Anaheim, where there is an immediate change in atmosphere. It seems older here, perhaps even pre-war. You cross La Palma Avenue and for the first time homes face Harbor Boulevard. Down the side streets you can see these are well-rooted neighborhoods, perhaps extending back to the ‘30s. To the left is Pearson Park, one of those rare, old-time downtown parks--the kind that have lighted shuffleboard courts.

But as you approach Ball Road, the motels start, and when you cross over the Santa Ana Freeway, the change is sudden and breathtaking. Dead ahead is nothing less than a frenzy of commerce.

There is so much commercial competition ahead that it almost obscures the golden goose itself--Disneyland. The amusement park created this Anaheim. Signs are everywhere --Chinese Food, Denny’s, Marco Polo Motel, One-Hour Color Prints, Stovall’s Cosmic Age Lodge. There are many trees but they are overwhelmed by the pavement and the heat, heat, heat. Everything seems--and is--hard and hot, and you don’t want to touch anything. If there is a Hollywood and Vine in Orange County it’s here at Harbor and Katella Avenue.

Yet amid the tacky motels (one’s marquee reads, “Nice Rooms. I’m Not Joking”) is a large field of corn and strawberries. These tiny rural remnants can be seen along much of Harbor Boulevard.

Into Garden Grove and Santa Ana, it’s at its worst--so many signs and pennants crowding up to the sidewalk that you can’t see any of them. The Garden Grove Freeway overpass is an oasis by comparison.

Then into Costa Mesa. Suddenly it seems neater. In fact, south of Warner Avenue, you can see evidence of city planners at work--the ones who make perfectly symmetrical communities that look like part of an electric-train layout. Between Warner and the San Diego Freeway, the business and light-industry parks are neat and new, full of firms that have that high-tech sound. One’s sign says it all: “Techniclone International.”

Harbor takes you under the San Diego Freeway, past an incredible concentration of car dealerships, past commercial strips that because they’re newer than Santa Ana’s and Garden Grove’s aren’t yet as trashy, and to the end of the line. In downtown Costa Mesa, Harbor is absorbed by Newport Boulevard for the last 1 1/2 miles to Newport Bay.

Here, Costa Mesa, too, is trying to refurbish its decayed downtown and is having considerable success. A savings and loan association has built a spectacular Spanish-motif headquarters nearby and is building a large shopping center along the same lines at Harbor and 19th Street. Costa Mesa, like so many people in Orange County, has visions of stepping up. It wants to be Orange County’s Santa Barbara.

If you want to keep track of how well the city is doing in its quest, take a spin down Harbor Boulevard now and then. It has been a good indicator for decades.