Placentia (/pləˈsɛnʃə/) is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States.

[10] Indigenous peoples of California referred to by the Spanish as Gabrielenos, known as the Tongva, lived in the area for thousands of years.

[13] In 1865, American pioneer Daniel Kraemer arrived and purchased 3,900 acres (1,600 ha).

In 1878, the school district's name was changed to Placentia School District by Sarah Jane McFadden, Placentia being derived from a Latin word meaning "pleasant place to live".

[13] The first commercial orange grove was established in 1880, worked by mostly Mexican and Anglo laborers.

The neighboring town of La Jolla, Placentia was constructed for a similar reason as a segregated colonia.

The flood left 3,700 refugees and 1,500 homes uninhabitable, and "caused more than 50 deaths, most from the Atwood area.

[13] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.6 square miles (17 km2), of which 0.22% is covered by water.

State Route 57 (the Orange Freeway) runs through the southwest section of Placentia.

State Route 91 (the Riverside Freeway) passes directly south of the city.

Districts in Placentia include the neighborhood of La Jolla and the formerly unincorporated community of Atwood.

The median household income was $75,693, with 12.2% of the population living below the federal poverty line.

[clarification needed] This project is in conjunction with the Orange County Transit Authority (OCTA), and will assist in the continued revitalization of the area, which is also scheduled for the building of more transit-oriented housing to complement the train station, mixed use, retail, and entertainment.

[10] In 1973, Chicano Park's "founding lead artist" Guillermo Aranda and "founding apprentice artist" Ernesto "Neto" Paul (San Diego natives) collaborated with the art students of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in painting a mural (about 8 x 36 ft) on the walls of the Tlatepaque Restaurant.

The following year, the chairman of Toltecas en Aztlan, and the board director of the Centro Cultural De La Raza, Guillermo Aranda, also invited these same Orange County artists referred to as the "Santa Ana muralists/Santa Ana artists", to come to Chicano Park and paint on one of the first pillars (second painted pillar) of Chicano Park.

Beginning in 1914, the Women's Christian Temperance Union established a reading and recreation room for boys in a storefront on Bradford Avenue.

[61] After a successful petition and election by the residents, the Placentia Library District was officially formed on September 2, 1919.

The library board of trustees hired Placentia's first librarian, Sara Rideout, for $0.25 an hour, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union turned over their reading room and 193 books.

The building, designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by renowned architect Carleton Monroe Winslow, features beautiful Talavera tiles created by Mexican potter Pedro Sanchez.

In March 1927, the grand opening was held for the new library building located at 143 S. Bradford Avenue.

[61] In 1974, the library again become too small for its growing collection and was moved to its current location in the Civic Center Plaza.

[62][63] Placentia is a part of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District (PYLUSD).

The Parkview School provides an independent study kindergarten-grade 12 school for students who are "homeschoolers, student actors, junior athletes, chronically ill, or in various other situations for which an alternative to classroom-based instruction is desirable.

A tentative completion date was set for June 2022, but construction is now "on hold" pending further negotiations with BNSF.

[65] In 2007, the city became the first city to implement a quiet zone[66] for the cargo-carrying trains that pass through the city daily, using locomotive grade-crossing predictors and intercrossing ground-based radio communications to effect a corridor where crossing gate arms become actuated prior to the train's approach, enabling trains to not be required to announce their approach by sounding the Morse code letter "Q" on their whistles, which is otherwise mandated by the Federal Railroad Administration.