Orange County Heritage Coordinating Council

As a Californio family descendant, a genealogist, and a local historian, one of my genuine concerns is the effect that such scattered resources of Orange County history and heritage has for future generations of historians and researchers. It would be my hope that the Coordinating Council address this situation in a forthright and active manner. To my knowledge, and to date, there is no "central clearing house" so to speak for the numerous collections, artifacts, documents, and materials relating to Orange County history. In the era of digital access and preservation, this seems incongruent and unacceptable. Our county is rich in resources of this kind and yet there seems to be no viable and on-going effort to coordinate the scattered materials available.

As a descendant of many of California's pioneer and founding Hispanic families, I am often struck by the lack of public acknowledgements of our heritage and historical significance. Yes, there are street names, small plaques, buildings, and even a few preserved/restored adobes. However, I have yet to see any large scale public statues or significant public events which focus on the Hispanic contributions and heritage of Orange County. In the East, many public parks sport life size statues of their founders in many forms.

I just stumbled upon the Orange County Public Library's historical images collection today.

It looks like the collection was launched back in June, and it currently consists of just under 1,100 digitized images from various Orange County historical organizations.

The 2009 Images of Orange County calendar is available for sale by the Orange County Mexican American Historical Society (OCMAHS).

Calendars may be purchased for $10 plus shipping/handling (or in person at Calacas in Santa Ana), but are included with a $15 annual membership to OCMAHS.

To place an order send your address and check/money order to:

OCMAHS Calendar
C/O Susan Luévano,
449 W. Jacaranda Place
Fullerton, CA 92832-1436

A note to all OCHCC site members who post content...

I've added functionality to support marking calendar entries as recurring events (weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.). This will help by not forcing you to enter each individual entry as a separate event.

Note the "Repeat" option under the Start and End dates in the submission form.

However (there's always a catch!), there's a bit of a glitch. In order to access the "Repeat" field and menu, the handy dandy HTML text editor has to be turned off, and then turned back on so that all our non-HTML-programmer members can still use the text editor.

Don't miss out on the slide show presentation this Saturday, November 15th, at the Katie Wheeler branch lilbrary, featuring photographs from the Irvine Family Archive. Get more information...