Atwood, Placentia, California

Last updated
Atwood
Neighborhood
USA Los Angeles Metropolitan Area location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Atwood
Coordinates: 33°51′57″N117°49′51″W / 33.86589°N 117.83091°W / 33.86589; -117.83091 Coordinates: 33°51′57″N117°49′51″W / 33.86589°N 117.83091°W / 33.86589; -117.83091
Country Flag of the United States.svg  United States
State Flag of California.svg  California
County Flag of Orange County, California.svg  Orange
City Flag of Placentia, California.svg  Placentia
Time zone UTC-8
  Summer (DST)UTC-7
Website City of Placentia

Atwood is a small predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood in Placentia, California. [1] Atwood's unofficial boundaries are defined roughly as the area of Placentia in the square formed by Orangethorpe Avenue, Van Buren Street, Lakeview Road, and Miraloma Avenue. There is a post office in Atwood with a ZIP code of 92811. However, this ZIP code is only used for PO boxes. All non-PO box addresses in Atwood are listed as "Placentia" by the United States Postal Service (with the exception of the post office itself: 1679 E. Orangethorpe Avenue, Atwood, CA 92811). [2]

Contents

There is a small business area of the community along Orangethorpe Ave. that includes the post office and restaurants, markets, a bar and other stores that cater to the area's predominantly Latino population. The Parque de Los Ninos city park can be found in the area along with a portion of a busy line of the BNSF Railway that runs parallel to Orangethorpe Ave.

History

In 1887, the town was formerly named Richfield after the oil wells that pervaded the area. [3] The town name was eventually changed to Atwood, after W. J. Atwood, an oil company executive, and was formerly an unincorporated town within Orange County before being annexed by the city of Placentia in the early 1970s. [4] [5]

At the turn of the 20th century, as described by the scholar Jody Vallejo, "Mexicans who did not live in East Los Angeles were segregated in suburbs in the Los Angeles metropolitan region, often referred to as 'company towns' that revolved around industry and manufacturing colonias, which, in Southern California, were typically segregated citrus-worker villages." Orange County was divided into eighteen small towns organized around the citrus industry which included the segregated company towns of predominantly Mexican-Americans, who "were isolated from the white population (often across railroad tracks or fenced in) in terms of housing, schools, entertainment, and even baseball teams". This legacy of segregation is the reason why Atwood, as well as other "distinct multi-generational Mexican American-concentrated neighborhoods that are working class and remain segregated, separated from affluent gated communities only blocks away" such as Casa Blanca, Riverside and La Jolla, Placentia, exist today. [1]

The Orange County Citrus Strike of 1936, which protested poor working conditions and pay, included citrus workers from Atwood. In response to the strike, attacks on the participating barrios were launched, sometimes using tear gas, after the sheriff issued a "shoot to kill" order against the strikers, "implicitly giving license to vigilante activity". White women intentionally broke the strike by going to the orchards to pick oranges as the workers were striking, while white college students from Los Angeles came to "staff the roadside barricades" against the strikers. [6]

The Santa Ana River flood of 1938 inundated Atwood after the water rose 5 feet in five minutes, following five days of heavy rain, reportedly "destroying everything but the La Jolla School Building and three brick structures". The flood left 3,700 refugees, 1,500 homes uninhabitable and "caused more than 50 deaths, most from the Atwood area". [7] This catastrophe led to the construction of the Prado Dam upstream near Corona from 1938 to 1941. [8]

In 1977, Chicano artist and teacher Manuel Hernandez-Trujillo created an unnamed mural in Atwood along a 260-foot-long wall above a river channel in Parque de Los Ninos. As reported by Lou Ponsi, the mural portrays "Mayan gods, Aztec eagles, orange groves, serpents, field workers, an image of the sun and a crossed rifle and sword – a representation of the Mexican Revolution". After it was "mistakenly whitewashed by county workers" in 2019, a restoration project was undertaken by Joshua Correa, Xochitl Zuniga, daughter of Hernandez-Trujillo, and Joe Parra. [9]

The police shooting of Caesar Ray Cruz in 2009, a resident of Atwood and "a married father of five who at the time of death was heading home to take his boys to football practice," along with the other police shootings of predominantly Latino men, culminated in widespread protests in 2012 in Anaheim, California. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orange County, California</span> County in California, United States

Orange County, colloquially known as OC, is a county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most populous county in California, the sixth most populous in the U.S., and more populous than 27 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Although largely suburban, it is the second most densely populated county in the state, behind San Francisco County. The county's three most populous cities are Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine, each of which has a population exceeding 300,000. Santa Ana is also the county seat. Six cities in Orange County are on the Pacific coast: Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, and San Clemente.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Placentia, California</span> City in the state of California, United States

Placentia is a city in northern Orange County, California. The population was 51,233 during the 2020 census, up from 46,488 in the 2000 census. This includes the community of Atwood, which is included in the city of Placentia, and is located in its southeastern quadrant. Primarily referred to as a bedroom community, Placentia is known for its quiet neighborhoods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yorba Linda, California</span> City in California, United States

Yorba Linda is a suburban city in northeastern Orange County, California, United States, approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. It is part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and had a population of 68,336 at the 2020 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Watts, Los Angeles</span> Neighborhood of Los Angeles in California, United States

Watts is a neighborhood in southern Los Angeles, California. It is located within the South Los Angeles region, bordering the cities of Lynwood, Huntington Park and South Gate to the east and southeast, respectively, and the unincorporated community of Willowbrook to the south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">California State Route 57</span> Highway in California

State Route 57 (SR 57), also known as the Orange Freeway for most of its length, is a north–south state highway in the Greater Los Angeles Area of the U.S. state of California. It connects the interchange of Interstate 5 (I-5) and SR 22 near downtown Orange, locally known as the Orange Crush, to the Glendora Curve interchange with I-210 and SR 210 in Glendora. The highway provides a route across several spurs of the Peninsular Ranges, linking the Los Angeles Basin with the Pomona Valley and San Gabriel Valley.

Olive is an unincorporated parcel of about 25 acres (100,000 m2) in the city of Orange, located along Lincoln Avenue, between Eisenhower Park and Orange Olive Road.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">El Modena, California</span> Unincorporated area and neighborhood in Orange County, California

El Modena is an unincorporated area and neighborhood surrounding El Modena High School and within the city of Orange, California. It is located near and east of the intersection of Hewes Street and Chapman Avenue. Much of the area was annexed by Orange in the 1960s and 1970s, but there are still enclaves of unincorporated county land to the east of the high school. The neighborhood is named after Modena, Italy, plus the Spanish article el.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">California's 46th congressional district</span> U.S. House district for California

California's 46th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of California.

Little Arabia is an ethnic enclave in Anaheim, California, the center for Orange County's Arab Americans, who number more than 24,000. It has been referred to as "Little Gaza" which was a riff on the nearby Garza Island neighborhoods. Little Arabia grew significantly in the 1990s with the arrival of immigrants from the Middle East, and is the home to thousands of Arab Americans predominantly hailing from Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Yemen.

La Jolla is a small neighborhood in Placentia, California in northern Orange County. Traditionally La Jolla has largely been made up of Hispanics, but does have Caucasian and a small portion of other races. This small neighborhood was once known as La Jolla Colony, Placentia and was not considered part of unincorporated Anaheim. Today, like the nearby community of Atwood, La Jolla is part of the City of Placentia. Since its construction, La Jolla has been bisected by the 57 Freeway, but connected by a traffic and pedestrian bridge over the freeway.

Harbor Boulevard is a north–south road corridor in the counties of Los Angeles and Orange. One of the busiest routes in Orange County, the thoroughfare passes through some of the most densely populated areas in the region and carries about 8 percent of the county's bus riders. The route provides access for local residents to travel to work and for drivers travelling from Valley Boulevard in the City of Industry via Fullerton Road to Newport Beach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avenues (gang)</span> Mexican-American street gang

The Avenues, also known as Avenidas or AVE's, is a Mexican/Mexican American criminal street gang mostly in Los Angeles County, California. They originally started as a social club for local Latino youths to protect themselves from other violent youths. The Avenues, like most Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, are under the direct control of the Mexican Mafia when sent to State, County, or Federal prisons.

The shooting of Michael Sungman Cho occurred on December 31, 2007, in the Orange County city of La Habra, California. Cho, a 25-year-old Korean-American artist, was brandishing a tire iron outside a store and was shot by two police officers. The shooting was ruled justified by the Orange County district attorney. Cho's family received a $100,000 settlement from a lawsuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Víctor Larco Herrera District</span> District in La Libertad, Peru

Víctor Larco Herrera also called commonly Víctor Larco is a district and a city of the north coast of Peru. It is located on a plain along the Pacific Ocean and is linked by a conurbation with Trujillo in La Libertad region. It is considered one of the 9 districts of the urban area known as Trujillo Metropolitano, one of the most populous metropolitan areas of Peru; it is also one of the 11 districts of Trujillo province. Victor Larco is the district that has the highest human development index (HDI) out of Lima Metropolitana, according to a study published by the United Nations Development Programme. In the early twentieth century, for its mild climate and fresh, it was known as Buenos Aires and then in 1945 got the name of Victor Larco Herrera in memory of the illustrious philanthropist Trujillan who was a benefactor of the city.

Anaheim Island consists of several unincorporated neighborhoods located east of the city of Anaheim in Orange County, California, United States. Established between the 1910s and 1960s, the neighborhoods are bounded by the cities of Anaheim to the east, north and west, Stanton to the southwest, and Garden Grove to the south. The Orange County Board of Supervisors has referred to these unincorporated areas as "Anaheim Island" while Orange County LAFCO has referred to them variously as "Anaheim West" and "Southwest Anaheim". The Anaheim City Planning Commission refers to the entire area in the singular as the "Garza Island". Some local residents refer to the area as the "Gaza Strip".

La Placita is a former settlement and the earliest community established in Riverside County, California, USA. The town was informally established soon after 1843 on the Santa Ana River, across from the town of Agua Mansa. La Placita and Agua Mansa were the first non-native settlements in the San Bernardino Valley. Together, they were referred to as "San Salvador", and were the largest settlements between New Mexico and Los Angeles in the 1840s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sports in Orange County, California</span>

Sports in Orange County, California includes a number of sports teams and sports competitions. Within Orange County, the city of Anaheim currently hosts two major league sports teams — MLB's Los Angeles Angels and the NHL's Anaheim Ducks — and used to host two others.

Placentia is a planned Metrolink rail infill station located in the city of the same name along Metrolink's 91/Perris Valley Line.

Anaheim Town Square, is a 372,185-square-foot (34,577 m2) community shopping center, the largest center in East Anaheim, California which was built at the intersection of Anaheim-Olive Road and Placentia Avenue.

Orangefair Marketplace is a community shopping center in Fullerton, California which when built was one of the earliest large shopping centers in Orange County, California. along with Anaheim Plaza and Orange County Plaza. It is located at the southeast corner of Harbor Boulevard and Orangethorpe Avenue, a mile south of Fullerton's historic downtown.

References

  1. 1 2 Vallejo, Jody (2012). Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class. Stanford University Press. p. 27. ISBN   9780804783163.
  2. "Atwood Post Office". Postal Locations.
  3. "Atwood: Focus". Los Angeles Times. 18 August 1988.
  4. Townsend, Adam (2 February 2010). "Marques Automotive protests land sale to Placentia". OC Register.
  5. Gonzales, Esther (14 June 1971). "Mexican American Oral History Project" (PDF). Center for Oral and Public History. 0021: 22 via California State University, Fullerton.
  6. Haas, Lisbeth (7 May 1995). Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936. University of California Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN   9780520083806.
  7. "From the Placentia History Room Archives: 1938 Flood, 75 years later". Orange County Register. 28 March 2013.
  8. David W. Kean, Wide Places in the California Roads: The encyclopedia of California's small towns and the roads that lead to them (Volume 1 of 4: Southern California Counties), pp. 18
  9. Ponsi, Lou (3 June 2019). "Efforts to restore mural in Placentia's Atwood neighborhood have taken off". Orange County Register.
  10. Saavedra, Tony; Wheeler, Ian (29 June 2019). "Secret files reveal details of police shooting that helped trigger 2012 Anaheim rioting". Orange County Register.