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.
For a generation it worked beautifully. Anaheim's vineyards became the largest in California and its wine shipped across the country — for nearly twenty-five years this was the state's leading wine district. Then, in the 1880s, a mysterious blight now known as Pierce's Disease moved through the vines and killed them by the hundreds of thousands. By the late 1880s the vineyards were beyond saving. It could have been the end of the colony. Instead the growers pulled out the dead vines and planted citrus — and Anaheim reinvented itself as the Valencia Orange capital of the nation, its crate labels carrying the town's name to fruit stands all over the country.
Why People Visit Anaheim California
Most people come to Anaheim for the modern attractions — but the city rewards anyone who looks for the older layer underneath: a planned German wine colony that became an orange-grove capital, with a 19th-century museum house, a heritage park, and a downtown still shaped by a willow fence planted in 1857. It's bright, warm, and welcoming, and its real history sits quietly right alongside the famous stuff.
