A few good stories survive from the colony years. The Mother Colony House — the home George Hansen built in 1857, now the oldest wood-framed building in Orange County and a museum since 1929 — once counted among its residents the celebrated actress Helena Modjeska and the author Henryk Sienkiewicz, who would go on to write "Quo Vadis." And the city's name lives on in an unexpected place: the Anaheim pepper, the mild green chili first grown commercially in this valley, still carries the town's name on grocery shelves across the country. Vines, oranges, a willow-fenced colony, and a pepper — that's a lot of identity for one valley to hold.
The valley was Tongva and Acjachemen homeland long before it was anyone's vineyard, and later part of a Mexican-era rancho. The town itself begins in 1857, when a group of German families in San Francisco pooled their money as the Los Angeles Vineyard Society and sent a surveyor named George Hansen south to lay out a colony. He divided the land into fifty twenty-acre vineyard lots and fenced the whole square mile with willow poles that took root and grew into a living wall — with gates at the north, south, east, and west ends of the two main streets. That willow-gate grid is still the bones of downtown Anaheim. They named it for the river and for home.
Why People Visit Anaheim California
- Tour the Mother Colony House (1857), the oldest wood-framed building in Orange County.
- Walk Founders' Park beneath the Landmark Moreton Bay fig and the recreated 19th-century grounds.
- Browse the Anaheim Packing House, a restored 1919 citrus-era packing building turned food hall.
- Stroll the Center Street Promenade and the historic downtown colony grid.
- Relax at Pearson Park, with its lawns, amphitheater, and shaded neighborhood paths.
