The captivating California coastline is 840 miles long. Bays, inlets, coves, craggy cliffs and smooth sandy beaches enchant visitors year-round. Nestled between Laguna Beach and Newport Beach an exceptional cove, slightly hidden from the road, boasts a storied history beginning with Acjachemen and Tongva Tribal Nations; ocean-going peoples who eventually moved to one of the nearby missions in the 1700s.
In 1864 James Irvine, a financier from San Francisco, purchased the cove from Jose Sepulveda, who had acquired the land thru a grant from the Mexican government. Due to several complications over a twenty-year period, Sepulveda fell into debt. Irvine and his partners intended to raise a huge herd of sheep and farm the land there, but the sheep soon succumbed to disease. James Irvine II, inherited the land upon his father’s death who had bought out his partners before he passed. Irvine II incorporated the land holdings creating ‘The Irvine Company.’ He set up the ranch to produce dry crops of barley, oats, wheat and hay.
Japanese Farmers
In the 1920s the Irvine Ranch of Orange County began leasing land to tenant farmers. Some of the original tenant farmers were Japanese American families, including Keichi Yamashita, who like the Honda, Furukawa, Miyada and other Japanese farming families lived in homes and barns that they built on the rich soil at Crystal Cove near the east and west side of what is now the PCH. Their cultivated crops included celery, cucumber, squash, tomato, and green beans. The farmers sold their produce at little roadside stands to locals and tourists and the LA markets…