As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding this year, did you know that 1776 also marks the beginning of Orange County’s story as well? In November of that year, Franciscan friars founded Mission San Juan Capistrano, the first permanent European settlement in the place that would come to be known as “The O.C.”

Orange County’s history over the quarter-millennium since then has shaped the community we live in today and created the amenities residents still prize.

Our county was officially born in 1889, after residents voted to break away from Los Angeles County, and it didn’t take long for it to become a tourist destination.

The arrival of the Pacific Electric Red Car in 1904 brought thousands of visitors to Pacific City, which was quickly renamed Huntington Beach in honor of street car magnate Henry Huntington. In 1914, the city of Huntington Beach replaced its wooden pier with a concrete one and to promote the new attraction, Henry Huntington hired a Hawaiian athlete named George Freeth to demonstrate a new sport called “surf riding” to the assembled crowd. The Red Car is long gone, but the beach it traveled to remains the most popular one with Orange County Register readers — and surfing is still a big part of the draw.

Down the coast, Laguna Beach was making its name as an artists colony, creating the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1918 and mounting the first production at Laguna Playhouse in 1922. The city held its first Festival of Arts in 1932, with 25 artists hanging their works on fences and trees in the downtown area. A “living pictures” exhibition, later christened the Pageant of the Masters, was added the following year. The festival and its pageant endure to this day and are a perennial choice for readers in the Best of Orange County’s best fair/festival category.

During World War II, the Santa Ana Army Air Base trained more than 125,000 aviation cadets, including pilots, navigators and bombardiers. The base was decommissioned in 1946 and the 1.3 million-acre site was repurposed to become the OC Fair & Event Center (home of readers’ most popular fair or festival), Orange Coast College (voted one of the county’s top community colleges) and several other facilities, including Costa Mesa City Hall.

One could argue the most consequential date in Orange County history was July 17, 1955, when Walt Disney opened the gates to Disneyland during a national TV broadcast. Disneyland instantly put Orange County on the cultural map and transformed Anaheim from a largely agricultural outpost to a potential entertainment mecca.

Seeking to leverage their city’s growing profile, Anaheim leaders proposed building a sports stadium to attract a big-league franchise. They persuaded Los Angeles Angels owner Gene Autry to move his team south and in 1964, the Singing Cowboy broke ground on a 160-acre site that is now Angel Stadium. An arena — now called Honda Center — was built across the freeway from the Big A in 1993 and a music venue opened in the stadium parking lot in 1999. Anaheim’s evolution will continue next year with the opening of OCVibe, a massive $4 billion mixed use district that will include 1,500 homes, more than 30 restaurants, a 5,000-seat concert hall and hotels.

In the late ’60s, developer Henry Segerstrom opened one of the largest malls on the West Coast in what had been a lima bean field along the newly built 405 freeway in Costa Mesa. South Coast Plaza remains one of Orange County’s most popular shopping and dining destinations, though its retail mix has changed from department stores like May Co., Sears and Woolworth’s to premier global luxury brands such as Hermès, Chanel, Tiffany and Louis Vuitton.

Segerstrom also spearheaded efforts to build a performing arts center that would rival those in L.A. The Orange County Performing Arts Center, now the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, opened in 1986 and continues to be celebrated by readers today as Orange County’s best live theater.

Wow, that’s quite a history — one defined by the innovation of visionary figures who saw our area’s vast potential and created the county we enjoy today. The Best of Orange County guide you hold in your hands is a testament to their impact.

Ron Hasse

Publisher, The Orange County Register