A Southern California Without Orange Groves? One of the Last Could Soon Be Gone

A California without orange groves will be a California with that much less character.

In East Hampton, NY, there is a town account devoted to buying such properties. It is funded by adding a certain percentage of the purchase price of expensive homes to it. The Town has thus protected vistas, ecologically important areas (particularly regarding water issues), and historic properties. I am very surprised that progressive California has not instituted such funds in individual localities.

The fair solution to keep all parties happy is for the local government and/or people who want to keep it to raise money equivalent to what the developers offer, purchase it, and protect it. It's only 12 acres, way larger tracts of land than this are bought and protected by conservation groups all the time.

Yes..as a kid my dad would drive down the Main Street of our town and my sister and I would grab oranges out the window. When we lost those groves (and the last drive in was torn down) we packed up and moved. Some memories need to stay strong.

Just look at the tax maps from the 1940's to the 2000's. Humanity has destroyed all traces of the natural world. Trees, fields, grasslands are eaten up by asphalt, highways, and housing. No sane person could call this "progress." Humanity has to decide for itself that it has expanded beyond any reasonable measure. We are destroying our home planet, destroying other species, and making our own lives intolerable. I hope the small piece of heaven at Bothwell Ranch can hold on, but it will take some big money to do so. We worship little bits of gold and silver more than beauty. We think strips of paper and digital numbers in bank accounts are more valuable than life itself.

Does nostalgia have a place in our world today? California is an incredible state but right before our eyes, it is becoming wealthy/poor. Water shortages combined with earthquakes, fires and unaffordable housing have suddenly changed it to something of a less than an appealing place. Say goodbye to the orange groves and welcome in the "new" California.

I lived in Woodland Hills in the 80's and worked at LAX. After the tediously long commute home sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, when I entered the Valley I felt a sign of relief. Orange groves, breathable air, open land, I had entered a different state. L.A. proper is a sprawling giant of jammed structures. Now is the time to act and not let this happen to the Valley. I agree with your readers, 'where there is a will there is a way"

Luckily we will always have Brazil for OJ. The groves near me in FL have all been replaced by sugar cane, at least until they can be developed. The Times has to make up its minds, yesterday were articles about lack of affordable housing, today we are wanting to save groves. If you want to have something preserved you have to do it yourself, until your children subdivide it.

I grew up in San Bernardino in the late 50's, 60's and early 70's. We were an hour to LA, an hour to the beach and an hour to Palm Springs. Nothing but lovely orange groves in every direction and as many others say, the scent of orange blossoms is like nothing else. I remember in the 60's starting to see groves being ripped out all around us. In 1972 I went to UC Irvine which at the time was surrounded by orange groves and grazing cows. By the time I graduated in 1976 ~ four short years later ~ they had disappeared. I hardly recognized it and so decided to move far away from California. I ended up in Colorado with pristine, gorgeous blue skies, ranch land everywhere. I was shocked California developers hadn't "discovered" it yet. Now, 40 years later the landscape is definitely under assault. Californians in droves are coming here because it's still beautiful. But not for long. Already now Denver and Boulder are so impacted that they have lost their cowboy charm to overdevelopment, traffic jams, dirty skies. The sprawl of humanity will take down Colorado too, unfortunately, because where there's money to be made, developers and city governments are in the back room making deals. The one great thing we have is long cold snowy blizzardy winters... a great deterrent for those seeking easy nirvana.

I could not read this without wanting to cry. The scent of orange blossoms carried to the ocean on a breeze, I can never forget.

Hard to believe, but once vast tracts of Southern California was orange groves, almond, avocado, bean and strawberry fields. By the late 1950’s and early 1960’s the region hit an inflection point where in Orange County one lived in this mid century ideal of an agrarian suburb. As a child you could, in some places, walk back from a typical, modern for then elementary school and detour through an orange grove. We would play in the groves, steal bags of fruit to take home and wade in the deep muck created by the trees’ water intensive irrigation. But with time they were all ripped out and the sweet smell of orange blossoms was replaced by the car’s exhaust; and the sky went from blue to near permanent brown from industrial smog. I have a few photos of the last of the old Irvine ranch groves just before they were bulldozed in the early 1970’s. The trees are still there, stretching as far as the eye can see, but the equipment sits abandoned and rusted, the packing barns are weathered, the paint of an old Sunkist logo faded or gone. If you went there today you would see another endless suburb of 1970-80’s tract homes. To me, saving 12 acres is as nothing. It will just be a park. You cannot will the past back from extinction.

Does the City Council plan to pay the family the market value of its property in return for their designation? This is a taking, pure and simple.

This story is nothing new. MFK Fischer wrote about tearing out the orange trees at the family ranch in the 1950s. After her father died, the remaining land was donated to the city of Whittier. I believe that it is Rex Kennedy park. Nothing to evoke the memory of the previous groves.

When we bought our grove in the early 1950's [about 3 miles southeast of where Disneyland would eventually be], we were outsiders. Most of the neighboring groves had been in the family for generations. The farm itself had been there from the 1880's -first grapes, then walnuts, finally oranges. Our early crops grossed about $15,000 a year, taxes were about $1000. About 20 years later, we are the only grove for a few miles around, and the gross is now down to about $10,000, and taxes are $15,000. So we were pretty much forced to sell. Shortly after we sold, a neighbor in one of the houses in the subdivision next door says "It's a shame you're selling; I moved here to be next to an orange grove." My dad looks him in the eye and says "I moved here to be next to an orange grove too, and you pulled yours out first."

I've been waiting for this. I grew up about a mile from these groves. Went to high school a half mile from there. Walked by them hundreds of times. There are times of year when the scent of the orange blossoms nearly lifts you from the surrounding sidewalks. A few blocks south of of Ventura Blvd which was, until the 101 Freeway was constructed, the orange grove surrounded road that was the main artery between Northern-Southern California. Time does move on, but this is a small footprint of California history that can never be re-created or reclaimed. Disney's California Adventure theme park is exactly based around this slice of early-mid last century life there. Indeed, wouldn't it be fitting for one Disney's foundations to buy it and donate it to one of the many fantastic nature conservation organizations that exist in LA? I've lived in Manhattan for 28 years, and each time I visit the area I'm astonished and moved by the fact that the grove is still there. That it was surviving the surrounding changes made me think something dedicated, militant and mysterious was going on in the middle of those groves. I'm predisposed, but it isn't hard for anyone to be nostalgic for another point in California's physical history - one without strip malls, eternal traffic, fences and electric gates between every house, massive sprawl. This may sound precious to some, because it is.

Perhaps they could follow the course developers did in the Santa Cruz mountains in the 1970s. Clear-cut and bulldoze a redwood grove, and then put up a trailer park called, "Redwood Grove Trailer Park."

Housing development in California is rampant, but all that has resulted is higher housing prices, very expensive water costs, and horrible traffic jams. Building apartments, condos, or houses for the last 40 years has not caused the slightest pause in the upward costs of housing. Apartments have been built on acre after acre in my home county, but they many have signs that say "luxury apartment living" on them. Housing complexes meet "affordable" status by including a very few low rent units. Please don't fool yourselves, developers have no interest in meeting the housing needs of lower income persons. In addition, they privatize the profits from their developments, while putting tax payers on the hook for services. As mentioned I earlier, water in California is a big, big problem. There simply is not enough in this drought-ridden state to meet the needs of an exploding population. And, no-- one season of good rainfall means nothing in California. This state is an arid climate with frequent droughts that are becoming more prolonged, due to climate change.

How much more housing density do you want? That shot from 2002--can only wonder what it looks like now--looks overly dense even compared to 1989. Maybe there are more people than the area can sustain.

It’s a good thing All the farmers in central and SoCal are using too much water and aren’t paying for it Farming doesn’t belong there unless we remove the subsidies, make them pay for water and hold them responsible for wastewater and pesticide issues Stop feeling sorry for farmers They’re well protected manufacturers

I'll take my "luxury" (rural) acreage in Oregon over the Southern California I left 12 years ago any day.

I lived in Riverside, California. IT is THE home of the naval orange, not L.A. The same problem is there but the University of California Riverside is known for it's citrus school. If you want to see the heart of citrus (oranges) go to Riverside. If you want to go to the heart of lemons, go to Ventura Country. Also, go to Kern County and go to Imperial County to see the agriculture of citrus and see what it being done by the University of California, Riverside. That's still where the action is.

When I read articles like this, I am always reminded of a quote by Edward Abbey: "Uncontrolled growth is the strategy of the cancer cell"

It’s over folks. Greed has won and if there’s any doubt about it, look in the White House.

I live very close by to this Orange Grove know it very well and often drive down the street just to go buy it. It's absolutely beautiful. In fact my old girlfriend lives on Bothwell Drive in this neighborhood. It is a really beautiful but I really don't think that the owners need to be strong-armed and forced to not sell the land. It is extremely beautiful I should go over there and take some pictures of it before they tear it all down

Too late. They should have thought about doing this 50 years ago. But where would Disneyland be located? Maybe a good place was near Barstow, CA. There’s only desert there.

Who remembers what the great Moor leader said about Orange Groves? And their disappearance?

Amazing how liberals are willing to encumber others' private property to the extent it results in a virtual confiscation.

Designating the grove as a protected historical monument amounts to seizure by eminent domain. Housing is much more important.

Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.

The systematic loss of trees and green coverage of earth will be leading the mankind by the nose along the gliding path of civilisational perdition.Sheddingof the comfort of foliage and groves will,for sure, turn out to be the anathema of human survival.Tawdry gentrification may serve to satiate some of the Homo sapiens in their urge for selective comfort but,will in the long run.make terrestrial living a hazardous pursuit. Groves of any shade,and chiefly orange groves, are divine gift and a mirrored replica of celestial charm.Oranges,with their bounty of citric wonder, constitute the storehouse of Vit-C, which keeps free radicals at arm’s length.It was the Nobel Laureate, Linus Paulin,who woke up our awareness to the miraculous nutritious weight of this life building Vitamin,by exhorting that an individual would require to consume in the neighbourhood of one gram of this vitamin C per diem to keep himself fit as a fiddle. Withal,the State of a California is universally identified with the eminence of orange and grapes as its home product ;and every American could be verily proud of its iconic status .Large scale destruction of the stellar groves in the name of making money in despicable building construction is a deviation from the balanced eco system and an unquenchable avarice amounting to cultivated vandalism. The sooner our passions are rejigged to basic environmental protection,the better for the future of mankind!

Too many people are at the bottom of all of our problems. There are too many already here and too many coming in. Everybody all around the world needs to have way, way fewer babies. We are destroying our own substrate and heading for disaster.

Having been brought up within 50 acres of orange groves I have a different perspective. It was Buena Park, Ca and the large orchard belonged to my grandfather. The day the tractors came broke our hearts for sure. My grandfather had just made more money then he had ever seen. I sincerely missed all the orange trees but it was NOT my property. There has got to be some "creative" arrangements whereby the owners can get paid for the property and the property itself stays like it is. State intervention? Designation as "Cultural Landmark"? I know there are some very smart and creative people out there. Think outside the box and try to satisfy all side of this.

Good article. I have used the historical information put herein for my own work since 2002. The old agricultural ways were lost forever beginning about 1990 in peripheral citrus farmlands across SoCal. There’s a few farms left in the San Bernardino area. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Citrus needs the packing plants and juice factories to survive. They cannot exist without product. Today, the Central Valley south of Sacramento produces most of the California citrus.

A half-acre with "some" trees isn't small park--it's not much larger than the lot size in that area.

Where are the billionaires who could afford to buy the property at market rate? And turn it over to a land trust. And get the donation as a tax deduction. Owner gets his value and the city gets its orange groves!

My parents moved to “The Valley” in 1965 after my father finished working on the Titan II missile program at Vandenberg Air Force Base. One of my earliest memories is of the powerful and indescribably luscious smell of citrus blossoms in the air as we went for drives during summer evenings. My Mexican grandmother would sit in the back seat with me, inhale deeply, and declare, “que lindo!” (how lovely). Dad next worked for Teledyne which kept intact most of the grapefruit orchard on which it was built. One of the perks of his engineering job was the grapefruits he brought home. After he left Teledyne a few years later, he and I were caught by a security guard in the orchard picking grapefruits. He let us go with our small haul after he learned dad used to work there. All of that is gone now. Orchards and farmstands where we shopped disappeared during my childhood. Teledyne left during the aerospace downsizing but the grapefruit orchard continued to stand well into the last decade. One year, I came home for a visit while living out of state to find the orchard had been razed. I pulled to the side of the road where it stood since before I was born and cried. I knew its demise was coming since it had been neglected in its final years while a Lowe’s hardware store replaced the Teledyne building. But it didn’t change the grief I felt at its passing and that of a special era. Bothwell is among the last of that era and should be preserved as a unique chapter in our history.

The people who are waxing nostalgic are the same who helped transform the valley from agricultural to suburban. That's not a criticism, it's just a reflection on reality. Nostalgia is not a good argument for the best use for this land. If affordable housing is what is needed then let that provide the direction as to what should be done with this property.

I realize I am not a stakeholder in this, by any measure. It’s just the opinion of a complete outsider. To watch the conversion of thousands upon thousands of acres of agricultural land into single family homes, then suddenly feel a need to protect the last dozen acres as some kind of monument to what it used to be like decades ago strikes me as punishing the last landowner who tried to hold out against development. Will the community remunerate the family that own this land for the lost financial opportunity? Otherwise it amounts to putting somebody else’s money where your mouth is.

Progress? I think not. How about population control, how about that idea?! When we continually mow down habitats such as this and so many forests, we seem to not care amount the collateral damage by the loss of habitat. The bees and birds that thrive there, the shade it all brings. Just keep mowing it down and putting in houses and ridiculous lawns that pollute. I know, how about we take all these ridiculous 15,000 square foot mansions and turn them into multiple housing units?

Funny how "reigning in development" in the late stages of development is always about "my feelings" and "somebody else's money". The fact is that unless the zoning is in place well ahead of time, people have rights to build in stupid ways. People will purchase land and sell land accordingly. California rejected the comprehensive land use planning approach that Oregon took. Californication resulted, as did the toxic "nothing ever changes around me ever" form of NIMBYism that pervades MA and NY as well. Meanwhile, housing becomes unattainable for many, and traffic piles up.

The owner should cut down all the trees, non-structural so not covered by the designation. Then he should put up signs welcoming LA counties homeless to come and hang out and set up their tents at the orchard. This will get the greedy nimby community members back down, since they would prefer having development to a homeless encampment.

The family had their capital tied up in this land for almost 100 years, paying real estate taxes on it, while consuming minimal civic services. They deserve to be compensated the lands true value for loss of opportunity costs.

How ironic that an orange orchard is considered to be historic to the San Fernando Valley. In reality, the orchards and the housing developments in all of Southern California are both serious anomalies to this semi-arid region. It was the combination of the crafty machinations of real estate developers, politicians, and financiers of the early 20th century that brought water from the rivers located hundreds of miles to the north and east that allowed any large-scale agriculture and the intense real estate development of the San Fernando Valley. I would highly suggest that people feeling nostalgia for life in the area within the last 120 years read the late Marc Reisner's excellent book, "Cadillac Desert"--or view (YouTube has it) the highly informative filmed documentary of the same name. The history of this arid region is a real shocker when learning about the vital role water has played in creating the image of Southern California that we've come to take as "natural"!

"...who have sought to sell it to luxury housing developers..." Just what LA needs, yet more "luxury housing"! How predictable.

I think the key fact is that the developer wants to build luxury homes. This happened in our neighborhood as well. The claim is that there is a housing crisis but the crisis is affordability. If communities step up and require builders of multi unit developments to build small affordable homes that might put a dent in the "crisis". It is important to preserve what we have left of the rural beauty that California represented in the past. Almost all of the development in our area (Carlsbad) has been luxury homes for decades. This has created a huge deficit in homes that can actually be bought by people who live where the homes are built. Communities continue to welcome the developer with the plan to build luxury homes at the expense of their residents in terms of quality of life and diversity of community. Housing crisis is a fear tactic used by the pro development community to promote their projects. The real crisis is that communities opt for money from luxury developments over their residents quality of life.