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    The Irvine Ranch: a Time for People: A 50-Year Overview of the Development of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California (With a New Epilogue)
    The Irvine Ranch: a Time for People: A 50-Year Overview of the Development of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California (With a New Epilogue)
    The Irvine Ranch: a Time for People: A 50-Year Overview of the Development of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California (With a New Epilogue)
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    The Irvine Ranch: a Time for People: A 50-Year Overview of the Development of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California (With a New Epilogue)

    By Martin A. Brower

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    About this ebook

    The Irvine Ranch: A Time for People describes the excitement, the accomplishments and the conflicts during the first 50 years of development of the 90,000-acre Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California, into the largest master-planned new community in the United States.


    The book highlights The Irvine Company, the privately held corporation which developed the Ranch under three ownerships during the post World War II years, focusing on the firms seven presidents and current chairman.


    Here is the dramatic transformation of an agricultural dynasty into an urban empire told in eight engrossing chapters wrapped around the actions and personalities of Myford Irvine, Arthur McFadden, Charles Thomas, William Mason, Raymond Watson, Peter Kremer, Thomas Nielsen and Donald Bren.


    The book provides the reader with an intimate perspective of the workings of the sometimes mysterious and frequently misunderstood Irvine Company.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJun 3, 2013
    ISBN9781481755146
    The Irvine Ranch: a Time for People: A 50-Year Overview of the Development of the Irvine Ranch in Orange County, California (With a New Epilogue)
    Author

    Martin A. Brower

    Martin A. Brower was Director of Public Relations for The Irvine Company, developer of the Irvine Ranch, from 1973 to 1985, responsible for all of the Company’s corporate, residential, commercial and industrial external and internal communications. From 1985 through 1999, he published “Orange County Report,” a newsletter covering trends in Orange County, California, and continued to follow The Irvine Company intensively. He lives in Newport Beach, California, with his wife and editor, Tamar, and writes a monthly real estate-oriented column for Coast magazine.

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      Book preview

      The Irvine Ranch - Martin A. Brower

      © 2013 Martin A. Brower. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 5/31/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-5512-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-5513-9 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-5514-6 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909012

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Original Copyright 1994 by

      Martin A. Brower

      Revised and Reprinted 2013

      ISBN 0-9641326-0-5

      Portraits by Craig Pursley

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Dedication

      Forward

      Prologue

      Chapter 1 Myford Irvine

      President 1947 to 1959

      Chapter 2 Arthur J. McFadden

      President 1959 to 1960

      Chapter 3 Charles S. Thomas

      President 1960 to 1966

      Chapter 4 William R. Mason

      President 1966 to 1973

      Chapter 5 Raymond L. Watson

      President 1973 to 1977

      Chapter 6 Peter Kremer

      President 1977 to 1982

      Chapter 7 Thomas Nielsen

      President 1983 to 1986

      Chapter 8 Donald L. Bren

      Chairman from 1983

      Epilogue to the Second Printing  (2013) 

      Dedication

      79610.png

      To the late C. Thomas Wilck: who on becoming Vice President Public Affairs for The Irvine Company in 1973 invited me to join him as Director of Public Relations that year; who cheered and sighed with me through three ownerships and four presidents over the next 12 years until we both left the Company in 1985; and who insisted to me that I should write this monograph because he felt that only I could capture the flavor and the texture of The Irvine Company and its people during the Company’s past half-century as it created the nation’s largest new community.

      And to The Irvine Company’s presidents and chairmen whom I have had the privilege of knowing personally: presidents Charles Thomas, William Mason, Raymond Watson, Peter Kremer and Thomas Nielsen; and chairmen N. Loyall McLaren, John Newman, A. Alfred Taubman and Donald Bren.

      SketchA.jpg

      The Irvine Ranch is located in the heart of Orange County, California, 40 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles

      Forward

      79613.png

      In 1952, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, published a book written by historian Robert Glass Cleland entitled The Irvine Ranch. This scholarly work detailed the history of the Irvine Ranch from 1769 — when the land was still inhabited by Indians, through purchase of the land by James Irvine, the evolution of the Irvine Ranch and The Irvine Company, and the emergence of the Ranch as a great agricultural empire.

      Ten years later, for the third edition — published in 1962 — The Irvine Ranch was updated and an epilogue was added by Robert V. Hine. The epilogue told of the creation of a master land use plan for the Irvine Ranch and pointed out that development was beginning to take place. The book’s final printing by the Huntington Library was in 1966.

      It must be noted that The Irvine Ranch was published with the complete support and authorization of The Irvine Company, and therefore is complimentary — or at the least lacks any critical observations — of the Company, its officers, the James Irvine Foundation and the Irvine Family.

      This current monograph, The Irvine Ranch: A Time for People, was written with neither the support, the authorization — nor even the awareness — of The Irvine Company.

      Rather than a historical document, The Irvine Ranch: A Time for People reflects the author’s conversations with Company officials, Irvine Foundation officials, Irvine Family members, and others — and his personal involvement in and observation of events — as Director of Public Relations for the Company from 1973 through 1985; as an observer of the Company for a decade prior to that time; and for the nearly three decades since then as editor and publisher of the monthly newsletter Orange County Report and later as a columnist for Coast magazine.

      Prologue

      79615.png

      The great Irvine Ranch was assembled by Scotch-Irish immigrant James Irvine and three partners during the mid-1860s. From that time until the mid-1950s, a period of 90 years, the Ranch was used for agriculture – first for sheep grazing, then for row crops and finally for citrus orchards, row crops and cattle.

      Irvine made a small fortune during the California gold rush selling goods to gold miners from his store in San Francisco, and had profited as well from investments in San Francisco real estate.

      From 1864 to 1868, Irvine – with partners Llewellyn Bixby and Benjamin and Thomas Flint – purchased two and a portion of a third Spanish and Mexican land grant ranchos totaling just over 101,000 acres in what was then southern Los Angeles County. Their purpose was to raise sheep in order to produce wool on a large scale.

      Records show that the 50,000-acre Rancho San Joaquin was acquired for $18,000, or 36 cents per acre. The 42,226-acre Rancho Lomas de Santiago was purchased for $7,000, 15 cents per acre. There is no record of the cost for the 3,800-acre portion of the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, but in all probability the entire 101,026-acre ranch cost no more in total than $26,000, or just over 25 cents per acre.

      Irvine bought out his partners in 1876 for an undisclosed sum, only 13 years before the southern tip of Los Angeles County was incorporated as Orange County in 1889. Now named the Irvine Ranch, the Ranch – extending 22 miles through the center of the new County of Orange from the Pacific Ocean on the southwest to the Riverside County border on the northeast and with a width of about eight miles – represented nearly 25 percent of the County’s 786 square miles.

      When Irvine died in 1886 at the age of 59, the Irvine Ranch passed, through a series of events, to his son James Irvine II, known as J.I. The 100,000-plus-acre Ranch was still essentially intact, and the value of the holding was set at $748,500, or $7.50 per acre.

      Only 19 when his father died, J.I. was a San Franciscan who enjoyed the San Francisco lifestyle, and for a number of years he visited the Ranch only when necessary. After he married, he visited the Ranch even less often – only when his wife would let him go.

      J.I. came into full possession of the Ranch in 1893 at the age of 25 and the following year, 1894, he incorporated the Ranch as The Irvine Company under the liberal laws of West Virginia. J.I. became the Company’s first president.

      Shortly after the turn of the century, following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, J.I. moved with his family to the Irvine Ranch, built a family home near the center of the vast property for his wife and two sons, and oversaw conversion of the Ranch from sheep grazing land into a vast agricultural empire. In the 1920s, in addition to already existing row crops, citrus orchards began emerging – expanding to 5,500 acres of valencia oranges and lemons. During the 1930s, a massive irrigation system was created.

      A man of strong convictions and short temper, J.I. is reported to have spent long hours moodily riding his horse over his immense land holdings, a rifle cradled in one arm. He became particularly distraught after the loss of his elder, handsome and dynamic 42-year-old son, James Irvine III – known as Jase – in 1935 from tuberculosis. A personification of his ambitious father, Jase had been vice president of The Irvine Company and was the heir apparent to the presidency.

      Two years later, J.I. established the James Irvine Foundation, with 51 percent of The Irvine Company’s stock to be held by the Foundation and the other 49 percent distributed to family members.

      One of J.I.’s true loves was the Flying D Ranch near Bozeman, Montana, nearly 80,000 acres of hunting and fishing land which he purchased with proceeds from the sale of two large sites on the Irvine Ranch to the U.S. government shortly after the outbreak of World War II. The government requisitioned the two sites, only nine miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, for use as military bases – the then-2,318-acre El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and the then-1,600-acre U.S. Navy Lighter-Than-Air Station.

      It was while fishing on the Flying D Ranch on August 24, 1947, that J.I. died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 80.

      On J.I.’s death, and with the passing of elder son and vice president James Irvine III (Jase), the presidency of The Irvine Company fell to J.I.’s younger son, 49-year-old Myford.

      Chapter One

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