Irvine

Sister cities

• Taoyuan District
• Tsukuba
• Hermosillo

History

The Kizh (Tongva) people (also known as Gabrieleño) inhabited the Irvine area for thousands of years prior to European contact. In the present, the city and the schools within are taking action to educate the community about the indigenous history. In 2024 there was a proposal to create a village based on Putuidem Village located in San Juan Capistrano. UCI set a Land Acknowledgement to inform the history of the land their campus is based on as well as many other immigrant groups that had also lived on that land. Gaspar de Portolá, a Spanish explorer, came to the area in 1769, which led to the establishment of forts, missions and cattle herds. The King of Spain parceled out land for missions and private use. After Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican Congress passed the Mexican secularization act of 1833 which secularized the missions and resulted in the Mexican government assuming control of the lands of said missions. It began distributing the land to Mexican citizens who applied for grants. Three large Spanish/Mexican land grants, also known as ranchos, made up the land that later became the Irvine Ranch: Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Rancho San Joaquín and Rancho Lomas de Santiago. In 1864, José Andrés Sepúlveda, owner of Rancho San Joaquín, sold to Benjamin and Thomas Flint, Llewellyn Bixby, and James Irvine for $18,000 to resolve debts due to the Great Drought. In 1866, Irvine, Flint and Bixby acquired Rancho Lomas de Santiago for $7,000. After the Mexican-American War the land of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana fell prey to tangled titles. In 1868, the ranch was divided among three claimants as part of a lawsuit: Flint, Bixby and Irvine. The ranches were devoted to sheep grazing. However, in 1870, tenant farming was permitted. In 1878, James…

Geography

Irvine borders Tustin to the north, Santa Ana to the northwest, Lake Forest to the east and southeast, Laguna Hills and Laguna Woods to the south, Costa Mesa to the west, and Newport Beach to the southwest. Irvine also shares a small border with Orange to the north on open lands by the SR 261. San Diego Creek, which flows northwest into Upper Newport Bay, is the primary watercourse draining the city. Its largest tributary is Peters Canyon Wash. Most of Irvine is in a broad, flat valley between Loma Ridge in the north and San Joaquin Hills in the south. In the extreme northern and southern areas, however, are several hills, plateaus and canyons. Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson designed Irvine's layout beginning in the late 1950s, which is nominally divided into townships called "villages", separated by six-lane arterial roads. Each township contains houses of similar design, along with commercial centers, religious institutions, and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships. Only automobile transportation was planned for, with other forms of transportation ignored, resulting in Irvine becoming extremely car dependent today. Pereira originally envisioned the university campus at the northern end of the Irvine Ranch. When the Irvine Company refused to relinquish valuable farmland in the flat central region of the ranch for this plan, the university site was moved to the base of the southern coastal hills. The city layout was based on the shape of a necklace (with the villages strung along two parallel main streets, which terminate at University of California, Irvine (UCI), the "pendant"). Residential areas are now bordered by two commercial districts, the Irvine…

Race & ethnicity

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