Our Anaheim logo carries California's bear and star over "1850," the year of statehood and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics California place. The bear and the lone star are the state in shorthand — independence, the Republic, the frontier — printed black-and-white with the worn look of an old crate label, a WPA poster, a piece of farm signage. What makes this one Anaheim is the place behind it: the German wine colony, the willow gates, the Valencia groves, the home by the river. On a tee or a cap it reads like a piece of orange-grove California — Est. 1850 on the emblem, with an 1857 colony story underneath.
Today Anaheim is the biggest city in Orange County, but underneath the modern surface is the oldest civic story in the county: a German wine colony that became the Valencia Orange capital of the nation. Its history runs from the Tongva valley and the 1857 willow-gate colony through California's largest vineyard, the Pierce's-Disease blight, and the citrus reinvention. Our Anaheim designs gather that identity into wearable form — the colony, the oranges, the bear-and-star, the home by the river. From the German vineyards to the Valencia groves — wear a little of Anaheim's home by the Santa Ana River.
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.
