[18][19] In inland villages such as Hutuknga, rabbit and mule deer were more central, in addition to acorns from oak trees and seeds from grasses and sage bushes common everywhere.

[23] Saint Junípero Serra y Ferrer and the early components of the Portolá Expedition arrived in modern-day San Diego, south of present-day Orange County, in mid-late 1769.

Orange County benefited from the July 4, 1904, completion of the Pacific Electric Railway, a trolley connecting Los Angeles with Santa Ana and Newport Beach.

As an eight-foot-high rush of water further spilled out of the Santa Ana Canyon, forty-three people were killed in the predominately Mexican communities of Atwood and La Jolla in Placentia.

This included the construction of numerous schools, city halls, post offices, parks, libraries, and fire stations, as well as the improvement of road infrastructure throughout Orange County.

The completion of Interstate 5 in 1954 helped make Orange County a bedroom community for many who moved to Southern California to work in aerospace and manufacturing.

He established a "Western White House" in San Clemente, in South Orange County, known as La Casa Pacifica, and visited throughout his presidency.

The northwestern part of the county lies on the coastal plain of the Los Angeles Basin, while the southeastern end rises into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains.

There are notable exceptions to these general trends, such as strongly Republican Yorba Linda and affluent Anaheim Hills, North Tustin, and Villa Park.

[65] Irvine is located in a valley defined by the Santa Ana Mountains and the San Joaquin Hills, while much of Southern Orange County is very hilly.

The Orange County Transit Authority studied the corridor as the possible route for a streetcar, a proposal that was dropped in 2018 due to opposition from Anaheim and other city governments.

[72] The 820 acres (330 ha) area undergoing this large-scale redevelopment includes the city's two major sports venues, the Honda Center and Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

[133] Among the Asian population, 6.1% are Vietnamese, followed by Koreans (2.9%), Chinese (2.7%), Filipinos (2.4%), Indians (1.4%), Japanese (1.1%), Cambodians (0.2%), Pakistanis (0.2%), Thais (0.1%), Indonesians (0.1%), and Laotians (0.1%).

[140] In 2016, The top countries of origin for Orange County's immigrants were Mexico, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, China, India, Iran, Japan and El Salvador.

[141] Orange County is the headquarters of many Fortune 500 companies including Ingram Micro (#62[142]) and First American Corporation (#476[143]) in Santa Ana, Broadcom (#150) in Irvine, Western Digital (#198[144]) in Lake Forest, and Pacific Life (#269[145]) in Newport Beach.

Other Fortune 1000 companies in Orange County include Beckman Coulter in Brea, Quiksilver in Huntington Beach and Apria Healthcare Group in Lake Forest.

[151] Restaurants such as Taco Bell, El Pollo Loco, In-N-Out Burger, Claim Jumper, Marie Callender's, Wienerschnitzel, have headquarters in the city of Irvine as well.

[176] Orange County's active outdoor culture is home to many surfers, skateboarders, mountain bikers, cyclists, climbers, hikers, kayaking, sailing and sand volleyball.

Former and current Orange County SC players include Richard Chaplow, Bright Dike, Maykel Galindo, Carlos Borja, and goalkeeper Amir Abedzadeh.

The elected offices of the county government consist of the five-member board of supervisors, assessor, auditor-controller, clerk-recorder, district attorney-public administrator, sheriff-coroner, and treasurer-tax collector.

[179] As of January 2023[update], the six elected officials overseeing the Orange County Department of Education are:[178][181][182] On July 12, 2010, it was revealed that former Sheriff Mike Carona received over $215,000 in pension checks in 2009, despite his felony conviction.

[186] Also on the list of those receiving extra-large pension checks is former treasurer-tax collector Robert Citron, whose investments, which were made while consulting psychics and astrologers, led Orange County into bankruptcy in 1994.

[209] In the 2022 midterm elections, no congressional districts flipped, though Republicans performed strongly in Orange County, with every statewide GOP candidate carrying it.

[197] Orange County has produced notable Republicans, such as President Richard Nixon (born in Yorba Linda and lived in Fullerton and San Clemente), U.S.

She argues that its conservative political orientation in the 20th century owed much to its settlement by farmers from the Great Plains, who reacted strongly to communist sympathies, the civil rights movement, and the turmoil of the 1960s in nearby Los Angeles — across the "Orange Curtain".

In the 1970s and 1980s, Orange County was one of California's leading Republican voting blocs and a subculture of residents with "Middle American" values that emphasized capitalist religious morality[clarification needed] in contrast to West coast liberalism.

In the 2007 special election for the vacant county supervisor seat following Democrat Lou Correa's election to the state senate, two Vietnamese-American Republican candidates topped the list of 10 candidates, separated from each other by only seven votes, making the Orange County Board of Supervisors entirely Republican; Correa is first of only two Democrats to have served on the Board since 1987 and only the fifth since 1963.

The Orange County Plain Dealer (January 1898 to May 8, 1925), was a mostly Anaheim-based newspaper, and successor to The Independent, bought by James E. Valjean, a Republican and edited by him, a former editor of the Portsmouth Blade (Ohio).

Since 1938, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad and later Amtrak, has operated the Pacific Surfliner regional passenger train route (previously named the San Diegan until 2000)[225] through Orange County.

Science fiction novels set in Orange County include A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick and the Three Californias trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (1984–1990).