The original inhabitants of the region that now comprises the City of Orange, California were Native Americans in the United StatesNative American peoples, known as TongvaGabrielinos to the local Spanish peopleSpanish settlers. In 1801 Don Juan Pablo Grijalva, a retired Spanish soldier and the area's first landowner, he was granted permission by the Spanish colonial government to establish a rancho in "the place of the Arroyo de Santiago." California was ceded to the United States by México with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and though many settlers lost titles to their lands in the aftermath, Grijalva's descendants retained ownership of his vast holdings. In 1869, Los Angeles attorneys Alfred Chapman and Andrew Glassell received as payment for legal services 1,385 acres (6 km sq) of land from Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, which they quickly subdivided into a one-square-mile town with numerous ten acre (40,000 m sq) farm lots surrounding it. Originally the community was named 'Richland', but the town’s application for a post office was denied in 1873 due to the fact that there was already a Richland, CaliforniaRichland in Sacramento County. According to California from the Conquistadores to the Legends of Laguna by Roeger W. Jones, Alfred Chapman (who wanted the name "Lemon"), Andrew Glassell (who favored "Orange"), and two other gentlemen (who pressed for "Olive" and "Walnut") played a hand of poker and whoever won the game would get to rename the town. Glassell, whose birthplace was Orange County, Virginia won the game, and in January of 1875 Richland was renamed Orange. The other suggested names were assigned to streets in the new town. The small town was developed around a central Plaza in the form of a traffic circle (or "roundabout") which remains to this day, and was incorporated on April 6, 1888 under the general laws of the State of California. That Orange was the only city in Orange County to be planned and built around a Plaza earned it the nickname "Plaza City." http://www.cityoforange.org/localhistory/ According to company records, Orange was the first developed town site to be served by the Southern California Railway when its Transcontinental railroadtranscontinental rail line (the nation's second) reached Orange County. The town experienced its first growth spurt during the last decade of the 19th century (as did many of the surrounding communities), thanks to ever-increasing demands for California-grown citrus fruits, a period some refer to as the "Orange Era." Southern California's real estate "boom" of 1886-1888, fueled by railroad rate wars, also contributed to a marked increase in population. Like most cities in Orange County, California agriculture formed the backbone of the local economy and growth thereafter was slow and steady until the 1950s, when a second real estate boom spurred development. Motivated by the development of a region-wide freeway system which connected Los Angeles' urban center with outlying areas like Orange, large tracts of housing were developed from the 1950s to the early 1970s, and continues today, albeit at a much slower pace, at the eastern edge of the City. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange%2C_California