Gateway to the Past

It’s an old agrarian enclave struggling to keep its identity as suburbia encroaches on all sides.

Olive, 12 blocks off Lincoln Avenue at the northern tip of Orange, is among the oldest communities in Orange County--second only to San Juan Capistrano. One by one, the landmarks that defined the town--the drugstore, the post office, the fire station, the mammoth Sunkist citrus packinghouse--have faded into the history books.

But while the markers of the past are gone, residents have begun fighting to keep the town’s memory alive for future generations.

Residents recently won a major victory when the historic Olive Elementary School opened its doors to neighborhood students for the first time since closing in 1984 because of low enrollment.

Activists are now working to restore the school gym, a Depression-era structure built by the Works Progress Administration and known for years as the Olive Civic Auditorium. They hope to turn the building into a centerpiece for the community.

“I think people are now waking up and seeing we have something special,” said Rick Weber, one of the leaders of the effort. “We feel like we can put Olive back on the map.”

Along this rustic patch of hillside, people still park old tractors on streets without sidewalks. Neighbors not only know each other by name, they know each other by heart--some retirees have been friends since elementary school and still live down the street from one another.

Founded in 1812 along the Santa Ana River, Olive was known as the Gateway City of Orange County because it was the main thoroughfare from Riverside to the coastal cities. At its apex in the early 1900s, the town thrived with multiple packing plants, a train station, a hotel and a bank, said Wayne Gibson, 68, a historian who has written two books about the town. All of those buildings have since been demolished. A fire in 1961 gutted the town’s grocery store, drugstore and post office, which were never rebuilt.

Flora Burbank, 74, who was born in Olive and still lives in the same house her father built, recalled a soda fountain and a vast gun collection belonging to the owner, Lee McClelland.

“He also was sort of the hometown doctor,” she said. “He knew everybody.”

Among the last landmarks of Old Olive was the Olive Heights Citrus Assn. packinghouse that sat empty for years. And in 1997, that too was demolished along with a former volunteer fire station next door to make way for condominiums.

Some remnants remain, including a building that once housed the old Olive Garage, which is now an air-conditioning business at the corner of Orange-Olive Road and Lincoln Avenue. Another packing plant, across from the former Olive Heights Citrus Assn., houses Merlex Stucco MFG, Gibson said.

The town’s church, North Orange Christian Church, also has survived, except for the pastor’s house. It was razed last year to add more parking spaces.

“Olive is just a memory for those of us who used to live around here, and know what Olive used to be,” he said. “As a community, there’s not much left.”

But when the Orange Unified School District suggested bulldozing the local school to build more homes, residents said they just had enough.

They began meeting after work at each other’s homes to talk about the prospect of the district reopening the school for their own children, dividing up research duties between them. They attended school board meetings and met with district officials. They spent weeks going door-to-door to count the number of school-age children in the area in order to convince district officials that the school was needed.

“It was a struggle,” said Weber, whose 7-year-old son now attends Olive. “I remember one day, it was raining. People had to write while covering the notebook or whatever from the rain, and then hiding it on the way out to the next house. . . . Many people made sacrifices.”

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Last year, the school board decided to spend $3 million to renovate the school and open it to the public. The school opened Sept. 7 and now has an enrollment of 412 kindergarten through sixth-grade students.

“There’s a tremendous pride of the neighborhood school,” school board member Bill Lewis said.

Some longtime residents believe the school will be the center of a revitalization of Olive. In addition to fixing up the gym, residents are talking about restarting the old Olive Improvement Assn., giving a forum for the community to address local issues.

There is also talk of special programs to teach both students and residents about Olive’s past. The school principal said she also would like to teach students about the various kinds of trees--some estimated to be 100 years old--that dot the hilltop campus.

“That school is going to be the future of Olive,” said Gibson, the historian. “It just gives meaning to community, a vitality and a source of oneness.”

Burbank, who attended the school as a child and later worked there as a secretary for 26 years, said recently, “That’s why it means so much to me to have the Olive school opened. It’s a little piece of Olive that’s still alive . . . and I hope the children would learn to love Olive school like I have.”

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Preserving Olive

Olive was once the eastern gateway to Orange County and its second-oldest community. But it is now all but faded from memory. Residents, however, are trying to preserve what’s left of Olive history.