La Habra is a city in the United States of America located in the State of California. La Habra is a part of Orange County, a region that is compromised of 34 separate cities. La Habra sits at the northern edge of the county line with Los Angeles County on the other side. "La Habra" directly translates to "the Opening" a name given to the region by Europeans in the 18th century.
The story of how La Habra got it's name starts with Don Gaspar de Portolá, a Spanish Explorer, who encountered the region when he was making his way up from San Diego into Monterey near the California coast in what historians would later refer to as the Portolá Expedition. The name La Habra means the opening and was given to the area due to it's flatness between the mountainous terrain. After Mexico's Independence from Spain the governor of California would hand control of the land over to Mariano Reyes Roldan in the form of land grants. The land was to be used for ranching. Mariano Reyes Roldan officially named the plot of land "Rancho La Habra" which consisted of what is both now The City of La Habra & The City of La Habra Heights.
After the US-Mexico War wealthy American business owners like Abel Stearns who had both American and Mexican Nationality would go on using the name.
La Habra has had a long history of ranching from the days of Spanish ownership well into the acquisition of the California territory by The United States. Ranching was the economic force of the region in the 1800's up until the agricultural boom that came later in the 1900's.
Ironically, some of the first Americans in La Habra where sheep ranchers newly arrived from Spain. These sheep farmers purchased land in the newly acquired US territories for $2 to $10 an acre.
At the turn of the century irrigation diverted from the San Gabriel River and redistributed throughout the Southern California region transformed the once arid ranching environment to a rich agricultural hub. The introduction of the abundance of water to La Habra created farm for a variety of different crops including grapes, oranges, and avocadoes. The money was quite literally falling from the trees and coming out of the ground.
This new boom in food and work attracted people from all over and by 1925 La Habra was officially incorporated into state law with a population of about 3,000 people.
Oil was discovered in La Habra in the late 1800's in the The West Coyote Hills area. The area would later be known as the The West Coyote Oil Field. This oil field produced about 250 Million barrels of oil during it's operational years from 1903 all the way up until 1996. This oil field and was one of the largest in the world up until the middle of the 20th century.
La Habra officially began as a city in 1925 and had about 3,000 people. Today La Habra has grown to a steady population of about 60,000 people with the most recent data indicating a number closer to ~62,000 as of 2024.
A lot of multi family building units and housing developments could see a slight bump in population sometime in the near future.
The second world war helped a lot of local economies transform from agriculture based economies to more industrial urban zones. Cali
Today the city has a diverse economy with big service sector along with some light industrial capacities. Currently the largest employers in La Habra are Walmart & CVS.
La Habra is also where Americas 37th President, Richard Milhous Nixon's career got started. In 1938 Richard Nixon opened up his first law office located in the center of La Habra Blvd. Due to safety concerns the building was torn down in 1992 but a plaque honoring his legacy remains where the structure once stood.
Despite all the controversy surrounding Richard Nixon and the Cold War their is positive things he did for the American people. One of those things he did was sign into law the Social Security Act of 1972. This law which greatly expanded Medicare especially helped people with renal failure which is currently the 9th leading cause of death amongst Americans.
Did you know that at one point La Habra was part of the longest electric railway in the entire world. The Pacific Electric Railway which was active from 1901 to 1965 was a mostly passenger railway that was completely powered by electricity and covered a little over 1,000 miles of track. This electric transportation system that sounds like something out of a science fiction movie connected people from major cities in Southern California like Los Angeles to the more urban and rural population surrounding them. This railway was one of the major reasons for rapid development in Southern California and held the title of long
Improvements in transportation and rapid population growth would later make the railway impractical for the average person as buses and cars began to be the preferred mode of transportation in the region.
Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be alive sometime in the early 1900's taking an electric train all the way from Rialto to Long Beach without all the freeway noises? I've regularly made that trip from the Coast to Redlands and constantly miss out on the scenery because I'm too focused on avoiding the speeding traffic the whole time.