Ventura County, California
Ventura County is a county in the southern part of the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 823,318; the largest city is Oxnard, the county seat is the city of Ventura. Ventura County comprises the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, included in the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area, it is considered the southernmost county along the California Central Coast. It is a separate metropolitan area west of the more populous Los Angeles metropolitan area. Ventura County has been named the "most desirable" place to live in the U. S. by the Washington Post and the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 2015, it is home to several of the safest communities in the U. S. including Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Newbury Park, Moorpark. Overall, crime in the county is 33% lower than California and U. S. rates. Two of the California Channel Islands are part of the county: Anacapa Island, the most visited island in Channel Islands National Park, San Nicolas Island.
Ventura County was inhabited by the Chumash people, who settled much of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, with their presence dating back 10,000-12,000 years. The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and traders with the Mojave and Tongva Indians; the Chumash are known for their rock paintings and for their great basketry. Chumash Indian Museum in Thousand Oaks has several reconstructed Chumash houses and there are several Chumash pictographs in the county, including the Burro Flats Painted Cave in Simi Valley; the plank canoe, called a tomol in Chumash, was important to their way of life. Canoe launching points on the mainland for trade with the Chumash of the Channel Islands were located at the mouth of the Ventura River, Mugu Lagoon and Point Hueneme; this has led to speculations among archeologists of whether the Chumash could have had a pre-historic contact with Polynesians. According to diachronic linguistics, certain words such as tomolo’o could be related to Polynesian languages; the dialect of the Chumash language, spoken in Ventura County was Ventureño.
Several place names in the county has originated from Chumash, including Ojai, which means moon, Simi Valley, which originates from the word Shimiyi and refers to the stringy, thread-like clouds that typify the region. Others include Point Mugu from the word Muwu, Saticoy from the word Sa’aqtiko’y, Sespe Creek from the word S’eqp’e. In October 1542, the expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo anchored in an inlet near Point Mugu. Active occupation of California by Spain began in 1769. Gaspar de Portolà led a military expedition by land from San Diego to Monterey, passing through Ventura County in August of that year. A priest with the expedition, Father Juan Crespí, kept a journal of the trip and noted that the area was ideal for a mission to be established and it was a "good site to which nothing is lacking". On this expedition was Father Junípero Serra, who founded a mission on this site. On March 31, 1782, the Mission San Buenaventura was founded by Father Serra, it is named after Saint one of the early intellectual founders of the Franciscan Order.
The town that grew up around the mission and remains named San Buenaventura, although has been known as Ventura since 1891. In the 1790s, the Spanish Governor of California began granting land concessions to Spanish Californians who were retiring soldiers; these concessions were known as ranchos and consisted of thousands of acres of land that were used as ranch land for livestock. In Ventura County, Rancho Simi was granted in 1795 and Rancho El Conejo in 1802. Fernando Tico was granted part of Ventura by Gov. Alvarado. In 1822, California was notified of Mexico's independence from Spain and the Governor of California, the Junta, the military in Monterey and the priests and neophytes at Mission San Buenaventura swore allegiance to Mexico on April 11, 1822. California land, vested in the King of Spain was now owned by the nation of Mexico. By the 1830s, Mission San Buenaventura was in a decline with fewer neophytes joining the mission; the number of cattle owned by the mission dropped from first to fifteenth ranking in the California Missions.
The missions were secularized by the Mexican government in 1834. The Mexican governors began granting land rights to Mexican Californians retiring soldiers. By 1846, there were 19 rancho grants in Ventura County. In 1836, Mission San Buenaventura was transferred from the Church to a secular administrator; the natives, working at the mission left to work on the ranchos. By 1839, only 300 Indians were left at the Mission and it slipped into neglect. Several outhouses were discovered in July 2007 dating back to the 1800s where a new site had been cleared to prepare for development; the area proved to be a treasure trove for archaeologists who braved the lingering smell in the dirt to uncover artifacts that showed heavy utilization by mission inhabitants, early settlers and Spanish and Mexican soldiers. The Mexican–American War began in 1846 but its effect was not felt in Ventura County until 1847. In January of that year, Captain John C. Frémont led the California Battalion into San Buenaventura finding that the Europeans had fled leaving only the Indians in the Mission.
Fremont and the Battalion continued south to sign the Treaty of Cahuenga with General Andrés Pico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally transferred California to the United States in 1848. By 1849, a constitution had been adopted for the California territory; the n
Southern California
Southern California is a geographic and cultural region that comprises California's southernmost counties, is the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States. The region is traditionally described as eight counties, based on demographics and economic ties: Imperial, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura; the more extensive 10-county definition, which includes Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, is used and is based on historical political divisions. The Colorado Desert and the Colorado River are located on southern California's eastern border with Arizona, the Mojave Desert is located north on California's Nevada border. Southern California's southern border is part of the Mexico–United States border. Southern California includes the built-up urban area which stretches along the Pacific coast from Ventura through Greater Los Angeles down to Greater San Diego, inland to the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley, it encompasses eight metropolitan areas, three of which together form the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area with over 18 million people, the second-biggest CSA after the New York CSA.
These three MSAs are: the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the Inland Empire (, the Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura metropolitan area. In addition, Southern California contains the San Diego metropolitan area with 3.3 million people, Bakersfield metro area with 0.9 million, the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, El Centro metropolitan areas. The Southern California Megaregion is larger still, extending east into Las Vegas and south across the Mexican border into Tijuana. Within southern California are two major cities, Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as three of the country's largest metropolitan areas. With a population of 4,042,000, Los Angeles is the most populous city in California and the second most populous in the United States. South of Los Angeles and with a population of 1,307,402 is San Diego, the second most populous city in the state and the eighth most populous in the nation; the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside are the five most populous in the state, are in the top 15 most populous counties in the United States.
The motion picture and music industry are centered in the Los Angeles area in southern California. Hollywood, a district of Los Angeles, gives its name to the American motion picture industry, synonymous with the neighborhood name. Headquartered in southern California are The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, MGM, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony run major record companies. Southern California is home to a large homegrown surf and skateboard culture. Companies such as Vans, Quiksilver, No Fear, RVCA, Body Glove are all headquartered here. Skateboarder Tony Hawk; some of the most famous surf locations are in southern California as well, including Trestles, The Wedge, Huntington Beach, Malibu. Some of the world's largest action sports events, including the X Games, Boost Mobile Pro, the U. S. Open of Surfing, are held in southern California; the region is important to the world of yachting with premier events including the annual Transpacific Yacht Race, or Transpac, from Los Angeles to Hawaii.
The San Diego Yacht Club held the America's Cup, the most prestigious prize in yachting, from 1988 to 1995 and hosted three America's Cup races during that time. The first modern era triathlon was held in Mission Bay, San Diego, California in 1974. Since southern California, San Diego in particular have become a mecca for triathlon and multi-sport racing and culture. Southern California is home to many sports sports networks such as Fox Sports Net. Many locals and tourists frequent the southern California coast for its beaches; the inland desert city of Palm Springs is popular. Southern California is not a formal geographic designation and definitions of what constitutes southern California vary. Geographically, California's North-South midway point lies at 37° 9' 58.23" latitude, around 11 miles south of San Jose. When the state is divided into two areas, the term southern California refers to the 10 southernmost counties of the state; this definition coincides neatly with the county lines at 35° 47′ 28″ North latitude, which form the northern borders of San Luis Obispo and San Bernardino counties.
Another definition for southern California uses Point Conception and the Tehachapi Mountains as the northern boundary. Though there is no official definition for the northern boundary of southern California, such a division has existed from the time when Mexico ruled California and political disputes raged between the Californios of Monterey in the upper part and Los Angeles in the lower part of Alta California. Following the acquisition of California by the United States, the division continued as part of the attempt by several pro-slavery politicians to arrange the division of Alta California at 36 degrees, 30 minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise. Instead, the passing of the Compromise of 1850 enabled California to be a
San Diego County, California
San Diego County the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the state of California, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,095,313. Making it California's second-most populous county and the fifth-most populous in the United States, its county seat is the eighth-most populous city in the United States. It is the southwesternmost county in the 48 contiguous United States. San Diego County comprises the San Diego-Carlsbad, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, the 17th most populous metropolitan statistical area and the 18th most populous primary statistical area of the United States as of July 1, 2012. San Diego is part of the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area shared between the United States and Mexico. Greater San Diego ranks as the 38th largest metropolitan area in the Americas. San Diego County has more than 70 miles of coastline; this forms the most densely populated region of the county, which has a mild Mediterranean to semiarid climate and extensive chaparral vegetation, similar to the rest of the western portion of southern California.
Precipitation and temperature extremes increase to the east, with mountains that receive frost and snow in the winter. These lushly forested mountains receive more rainfall than average in southern California, while the desert region of the county lies in a rain shadow to the east, which extends into the Desert Southwest region of North America. There are 16 naval and military installations of the U. S. Navy, U. S. Marine Corps, the U. S. Coast Guard in San Diego County; these include the Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Naval Air Station North Island. From north to south, San Diego County extends from the southern borders of Orange and Riverside Counties to the Mexico-U. S. Border and Baja California. From west to east, San Diego County stretches from the Pacific Ocean to its boundary with Imperial County; the area, now San Diego County has been inhabited for more than 12,000 years by Kumeyaay, Luiseño, Cupeño and Cahuilla Indians and their local predecessors.
In 1542, the explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who may have been born in Portugal but sailed on behalf of Spain, claimed San Diego Bay for the Spanish Empire, he named the site San Miguel. In November 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno surveyed the harbor and what are now Mission Bay and Point Loma and named the area for Saint Didacus, a Spaniard more known as San Diego. European settlement in what is now San Diego County began with the founding of the San Diego Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá by Spanish soldiers and clerics in 1769; this county was part of Alta California under the Viceroyalty of New Spain until the Mexican declaration of independence. From 1821 through 1848 this area was part of Mexico. San Diego County became part of the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, ending the Mexican–American War; this treaty designated the new border as terminating at a point on the Pacific Ocean coast which would result in the border passing one Spanish league south of the southernmost portion of San Diego Bay, thus ensuring that the United States received all of this natural harbor.
San Diego County was one of the original counties of California, created at the time of California statehood in 1850. At the time of its establishment in 1850, San Diego County was large, included all of southernmost California south and east of Los Angeles County, it included areas of what are now Inyo and San Bernardino Counties, as well as all of what are now Riverside and Imperial Counties. During the part of the 19th century, there were numerous changes in the boundaries of San Diego County, when various areas were separated to make up the counties mentioned above; the most recent changes were the establishments of Riverside County in 1893 and Imperial County in 1907. Imperial County was the last county to be established in California, after this division, San Diego no longer extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Colorado River, it no longer covered the entire border between California and Mexico. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 4,526 square miles, of which 4,207 square miles is land and 319 square miles is water.
The county is larger in area than the combined states of Rhode Delaware. San Diego County has a varied topography. On its western side is more than 70 miles of coastline. Most of San Diego between the coast and the Laguna Mountains consists of hills and small canyons. Snow-capped mountains rise with the Sonoran Desert farther to the east. Cleveland National Forest is spread across the central portion of the county, while the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park occupies most of the northeast. Although the county's western third is urban, the mountains and deserts in the eastern two-thirds are undeveloped backcountry. Most of these backcountry areas are home to a native plant community known as chaparral. San Diego County contains more than a million acres of chaparral, twice as much as any other California county. North San Diego County is known as North County; the eastern suburbs are collectively known as East County, though most still lie in the western third of the county. The southern suburbs and southern detached portion of the city of San Diego, extending to the Mexican border, are collectively referred to as South Bay.
Periodically the area has been subject to wildfires th
Zeolite
Zeolites are microporous, aluminosilicate minerals used as commercial adsorbents and catalysts. The term zeolite was coined in 1756 by Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, who observed that heating the material, believed to have been stilbite, produced large amounts of steam from water, adsorbed by the material. Based on this, he called the material zeolite, from the Greek ζέω, meaning "to boil" and λίθος, meaning "stone"; the classic reference for the field has been Breck's book Zeolite Molecular Sieves: Structure, And Use. Zeolites occur but are produced industrially on a large scale; as of December 2018, 245 unique zeolite frameworks have been identified, over 40 occurring zeolite frameworks are known. Every new zeolite structure, obtained is examined by the International Zeolite Association Structure Commission and receives a three letter designation. Zeolites have a porous structure that can accommodate a wide variety of cations, such as Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and others; these positive ions are rather loosely held and can be exchanged for others in a contact solution.
Some of the more common mineral zeolites are analcime, clinoptilolite, natrolite and stilbite. An example of the mineral formula of a zeolite is: Na2Al2Si3O10 the formula for natrolite; these cation exchanged. Natural zeolites form. Zeolites crystallize in post-depositional environments over periods ranging from thousands to millions of years in shallow marine basins. Occurring zeolites are pure and are contaminated to varying degrees by other minerals, quartz, or other zeolites. For this reason occurring zeolites are excluded from many important commercial applications where uniformity and purity are essential. Zeolites are the aluminosilicate members of the family of microporous solids known as "molecular sieves", consist of Si, Al, O, metals including Ti, Sn, Zn, so on; the term molecular sieve refers to a particular property of these materials, i.e. the ability to selectively sort molecules based on a size exclusion process. This is due to a regular pore structure of molecular dimensions; the maximum size of the molecular or ionic species that can enter the pores of a zeolite is controlled by the dimensions of the channels.
These are conventionally defined by the ring size of the aperture, for example, the term "8-ring" refers to a closed loop, built from eight tetrahedrally coordinated silicon atoms and 8 oxygen atoms. These rings are not always symmetrical due to a variety of causes, including strain induced by the bonding between units that are needed to produce the overall structure, or coordination of some of the oxygen atoms of the rings to cations within the structure. Therefore, the pores in many zeolites are not cylindrical. Zeolites transform to other minerals under weathering, hydrothermal alteration or metamorphic conditions; some examples: The sequence of silica-rich volcanic rocks progresses from: Clay → quartz → mordenite–heulandite → epistilbite → stilbite → thomsonite–mesolite-scolecite → chabazite → calcite. The sequence of silica-poor volcanic rocks progresses from: Cowlesite → levyne–offretite → analcime → thomsonite–mesolite-scolecite → chabazite → calcite. Industrially important zeolites are produced synthetically.
Typical procedures entail heating aqueous solutions of silica with sodium hydroxide. Equivalent reagents include sodium silicate. Further variations include changes in the cations to include quaternary ammonium cations. Synthetic zeolites hold some key advantages over their natural analogues; the synthetic materials are manufactured in a phase-pure state. It is possible to produce zeolite structures that do not appear in nature. Zeolite A is a well-known example. Since the principal raw materials used to manufacture zeolites are silica and alumina, which are among the most abundant mineral components on earth, the potential to supply zeolites is unlimited. Conventional open-pit mining techniques are used to mine natural zeolites; the overburden is removed to allow access to the ore. The ore may be blasted or stripped for processing by using tractors equipped with ripper blades and front-end loaders. In processing, the ore is crushed and milled; the milled ore may be shipped in bags or bulk. The crushed product may be screened to remove fine material when a granular product is required, some pelletized products are produced from fine material.
As of 2016 the world's annual production of natural zeolite approximates 3 million tonnes. Major producers in 2010 included China, South Korea, Jordan, Turkey Slovakia and the United States; the ready availability of zeolite-rich rock at low cost and the shortage of competing minerals and rocks are the most important factors for its large-scale use. According to the United States Geological Survey, it is that a significant percentage of the material sold as zeolites in some countries is ground or sawn volcanic tuff that contains only a small amount of zeolites; some examples of such usage include dimension stone, lightweight aggregate, pozzolanic cement, soil conditioners. There are over 200 synthetic zeolites that have been synthesized by a process of slow crystallization of a silica-alumina gel in the presence of alkalis and organic templates. Many
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with elements and compounds composed of atoms and ions: their composition, properties and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances. In the scope of its subject, chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology, it is sometimes called the central science because it provides a foundation for understanding both basic and applied scientific disciplines at a fundamental level. For example, chemistry explains aspects of plant chemistry, the formation of igneous rocks, how atmospheric ozone is formed and how environmental pollutants are degraded, the properties of the soil on the moon, how medications work, how to collect DNA evidence at a crime scene. Chemistry addresses topics such as how atoms and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds. There are four types of chemical bonds: covalent bonds, in which compounds share one or more electron; the word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to an earlier set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, philosophy, astronomy and medicine.
It is seen as linked to the quest to turn lead or another common starting material into gold, though in ancient times the study encompassed many of the questions of modern chemistry being defined as the study of the composition of waters, growth, disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies by the early 4th century Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. An alchemist was called a'chemist' in popular speech, the suffix "-ry" was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as "chemistry"; the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία; this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, in turn derived from the word Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt in the Egyptian language. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning "cast together"; the current model of atomic structure is the quantum mechanical model. Traditional chemistry starts with the study of elementary particles, molecules, metals and other aggregates of matter.
This matter can be studied in isolation or in combination. The interactions and transformations that are studied in chemistry are the result of interactions between atoms, leading to rearrangements of the chemical bonds which hold atoms together; such behaviors are studied in a chemistry laboratory. The chemistry laboratory stereotypically uses various forms of laboratory glassware; however glassware is not central to chemistry, a great deal of experimental chemistry is done without it. A chemical reaction is a transformation of some substances into one or more different substances; the basis of such a chemical transformation is the rearrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds between atoms. It can be symbolically depicted through a chemical equation, which involves atoms as subjects; the number of atoms on the left and the right in the equation for a chemical transformation is equal. The type of chemical reactions a substance may undergo and the energy changes that may accompany it are constrained by certain basic rules, known as chemical laws.
Energy and entropy considerations are invariably important in all chemical studies. Chemical substances are classified in terms of their structure, phase, as well as their chemical compositions, they can be analyzed using the tools of e.g. spectroscopy and chromatography. Scientists engaged in chemical research are known as chemists. Most chemists specialize in one or more sub-disciplines. Several concepts are essential for the study of chemistry; the particles that make up matter have rest mass as well – not all particles have rest mass, such as the photon. Matter can be a mixture of substances; the atom is the basic unit of chemistry. It consists of a dense core called the atomic nucleus surrounded by a space occupied by an electron cloud; the nucleus is made up of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons, while the electron cloud consists of negatively charged electrons which orbit the nucleus. In a neutral atom, the negatively charged electrons balance out the positive charge of the protons.
The nucleus is dense. The atom is the smallest entity that can be envisaged to retain the chemical properties of the element, such as electronegativity, ionization potential, preferred oxidation state, coordination number, preferred types of bonds to form. A chemical element is a pure substance, composed of a single type of atom, characterized by its particular number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms, known as the atomic number and represented by the symbol Z; the mass number is the sum of the number of neutrons in a nucleus. Although all the nuclei of all atoms belonging to one element will have the same
Orange County, California
Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,010,232, making it the third-most populous county in California, the sixth-most populous in the United States, more populous than 21 U. S. states. Its county seat is Santa Ana, it is the second most densely populated county behind San Francisco County. The county's four largest cities by population, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach, each have a population exceeding 200,000. Several of Orange County's cities are on the Pacific Ocean western coast, including Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente. Orange County is included in Metropolitan Statistical Area. Thirty-four incorporated towns and cities are in the county. Anaheim was the first city, incorporated in 1870 when the region was still part of neighboring Los Angeles County. Whereas most population centers in the United States tend to be identified by a major city with a large downtown central business district, Orange County has no single major downtown / CBD or dominant urban center.
Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine all have smaller high-rise CBDs, other, older cities like Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Orange have traditional American downtowns without high-rises. The county's northern and central portions are urbanized and dense, despite the prevalence of the single-family home as a dominant land use, its southern portion is more suburban, with limited urbanization. There are several "edge city"-style developments, such as Irvine Business Center, Newport Center, South Coast Metro. Orange County is part of the "Tech Coast"; the county is a tourist center, with attractions like Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, several popular beaches along its more than 40 miles of coastline. Throughout the 20th century and up until 2016, it was known for its political conservatism and for being a bastion for the Republican Party, with a 2005 academic study listing three Orange County cities as among America's 25 most conservative. However, the county's changing demographics have resulted in a shift in political alignments.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton became the first Democrat since 1936 to carry Orange County in a presidential election and in the 2018 midterm elections the Democratic Party gained control of every Congressional seat in the county. Members of the Tongva, Juaneño, Luiseño Native American groups long inhabited the area. After the 1769 expedition of Gaspar de Portolà, a Spanish expedition led by Junipero Serra named the area Valle de Santa Ana. On November 1, 1776, Mission San Juan Capistrano became the area's first permanent European settlement. Among those who came with Portolá were José Manuel Nieto and José Antonio Yorba. Both these men were given land grants—Rancho Los Nietos and Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, respectively; the Nieto heirs were granted land in 1834. The Nieto ranches were known as Rancho Los Alamitos, Rancho Las Bolsas, Rancho Los Coyotes. Yorba heirs Bernardo Yorba and Teodosio Yorba were granted Rancho Cañón de Santa Ana and Rancho Lomas de Santiago, respectively. Other ranchos in Orange County were granted by the Mexican government during the Mexican period in Alta California.
A severe drought in the 1860s devastated the prevailing industry, cattle ranching, much land came into the possession of Richard O'Neill, Sr. James Irvine and other land barons. In 1887, silver was discovered in the Santa Ana Mountains, attracting settlers via the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads. After several failed attempts in previous sessions, the California legislature passed a bill authorizing the portion of Los Angeles County south of Coyote Creek to hold a referendum on whether to remain part of Los Angeles County or to secede and form a new county to be named “Orange” as directed by the legislature; such referendum required a 2/3 vote for secession to take place, subsequently on June 4th, 1889, the residents south of Coyote Creek voted 2,509 to 500 in favor of secession. After such referendum, Los Angeles County filed three lawsuits in the courts to stall and stop the secession from occurring, but such attempts were futile. On July 17, 1889, a second referendum was held south of the Coyote Creek to determine if the county seat of the to-be county to be in either Anaheim or Santa Ana, along with an election for every county officer.
In the end, Santa Ana defeated Anaheim in such referendum and elected right leaning officers, with some, including one of the primary lobbyists for the creation of the county, Henry W. Head, elected to the Board of Supervisors while being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, with Head’s son, Horace Head, elected as District Attorney of the soon to be county, known to, as stated by the OC Weekly, threaten “...any Mexicans who walked in front of their homes with shotguns when not burning crosses on front lawns,” along with Horace Head supporting and defending his fathers affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. With the referendum taken place, the County of Orange was incorporated on August 1st, 1889, as prescribed by state law. Since the date of the incorporation of the county, the only geographical changes to have occurred which affected Orange County was when the County and Los Angeles County agreed to trade land around Coyote Creek to adjust the border of the two counties to conform with city blocks.
The county is said to have been named for the
Colorado River Aqueduct
The Colorado River Aqueduct, or CRA, is a 242 mi water conveyance in Southern California in the United States, operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The aqueduct impounds water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border west across the Mojave and Colorado deserts to the east side of the Santa Ana Mountains, it is one of the primary sources of drinking water for Southern California. Conceived by William Mulholland and designed by Chief Engineer Frank E. Weymouth of the MWD, it was the largest public works project in southern California during the Great Depression; the project as many as 10,000 at one time. The system is composed of two reservoirs, five pumping stations, 62 mi of canals, 92 mi of tunnels, 84 mi of buried conduit and siphons. Average annual throughput is 1,200,000 acre⋅ft; the Colorado River Aqueduct begins near Parker Dam on the Colorado River. There, the water is pumped up the Whipple Mountains where the water emerges and begins flowing through 60 mi of siphons and open canals on the southern Mojave Desert.
At Iron Mountain, the water is again lifted, 144 ft. The aqueduct turns southwest towards the Eagle Mountains. There the water is lifted two more times, first by 438 ft to an elevation of more than 1,400 ft by 441 ft to an elevation of 1,800 ft above sea level; the CRA runs through the deserts of the Coachella Valley and through the San Gorgonio Pass. Near Cabazon, the aqueduct begins to run underground until it enters the San Jacinto Tunnel at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains. On the other side of the mountains the aqueduct continues to run underground until it reaches the terminus at Lake Mathews. From there, 156 mi of distribution lines, along with eight more tunnels, delivers water to member cities; some of the water is siphoned off in San Jacinto via the San Diego canal, part of the San Diego Aqueduct that delivers water to San Diego County. As the Los Angeles metropolitan area grew in the early 1900s, Mulholland and others began looking for new sources of water. Los Angeles laid claim to the waters of the Owens Valley, east of the Sierra Nevada, in 1913 completed the 240-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct to deliver its waters to the burgeoning city.
By the early 1920s, Los Angeles had grown so that the Owens River watershed could no longer supply the city's needs for domestic and agricultural water. By 1923, Mulholland and his engineers were looking east to an larger water supply, the Colorado River; the plan was to dam the Colorado River and carry its waters across hundreds of miles of mountains and deserts. In 1924, the first steps were taken to create a metropolitan water district, made up of various cities throughout southern California; the Metropolitan Water District was incorporated on December 6, 1928, in 1929 took over where Los Angeles had left off, planning for a Colorado River aqueduct. The MWD considered eight routes for the aqueduct. In 1931, the MWD board of directors chose the Parker route which would require the building of the Parker Dam; the Parker route was chosen. A $220 million bond was approved on September 29, 1931. Work began in January 1933 near Thousand Palms, in 1934 the United States Bureau of Reclamation began work on the Parker Dam.
Construction of the aqueduct was finished in 1935. Water first flowed in the aqueduct on January 7, 1939; the CRA contributed to urban growth in the south coast region. Although the CRA brought "too much, too expensive" water in its early years of operation and expansion of MWD's service area brought reduced prices and expanded demand. On subsidies and sprawl, note that it was not until 1954 that Met's revenue from selling water exceed the cost of delivering it. Since about 80 percent of Met's costs are fixed, revenue needs to cover far more than operating expenses in order to pay for all costs. In 1955, the aqueduct was recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of American Engineering". San Jacinto Tunnel Metropolitan Water District of Southern California official website Colorado River Aqueduct Page at Maven's Notebook The Colorado River Aqueduct at The Center for Land Use Interpretation The Los Angeles Aqueduct at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Howser, Huell.
"Mt. San Jacinto – California's Gold". California's Gold. Chapman University Huell Howser Archive
