Costa Mesa—a vibrant city of 69 years with a population of 111,000 in 2021, according to census data—grew from a small Spanish settlement into the hub of arts and culture in Orange County.
The region’s first inhabitants were a Native American tribe called the Yukup who settled along the banks of the Santa Ana River, according to the Costa Mesa Historical Society.
Later in 1776, Spanish settlers founded Mission San Juan Capistrano, which covered the modern-day cities of Costa Mesa and San Juan Capistrano. The settlers used the fertile grasslands of the Costa Mesa area as a grazing ground for their cattle.
About three decades later, Jose Antonio Yorba, a Spanish settler and former soldier, was awarded part of the land by the Spanish Empire. The city of Yorba Linda would later be named after Yorba’s son, Bernardo Yorba, one of California’s most successful ranchers in the 19th century.
The first adobe house for cattle herders was built in the region in 1820. Now called the Diego Sepúlveda Adobe, the city restored and transformed it into a museum in Estancia Park. It’s the only building that still stands from that time period.
By the early 1900s, settlers began to purchase land from Yorba’s heirs and establish small towns that would later become cities of Orange County, which became an official county in 1889.
About a dozen families built Harper, a small town named after a rancher, alongside a railroad built between Santa Ana and present-day Newport Beach. In 1909, Harper had its first business, Ozment General Store, which later also housed the town’s first post office. The little agricultural town became known for its sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, and apples.
In 1920, Harper became Costa Mesa—“coastal tableland” in Spanish—as it’s located on a plateau overlooking the scenic Newport Beach coast, and continued as a farming town.
Oil drilling and building industries took off shortly after, but then the Great Depression hit, stunting the town’s growth and causing businesses, including the local bank, to close.
Then in 1933, an earthquake caused significant damage to businesses and the main school in town. Yet the resilient community soon rebuilt what had been destroyed.
The school is now known as the Clara McNally School, named after a compassionate teacher who taught there after rebuilding, and these same buildings are still used by the city today for school administration and services.
The region’s population started to grow as World War II brought thousands of people from across the nation to be trained at the Santa Ana Army Air Base, which later became the Orange Coast College, the Civic Center, and the Orange County Fairgrounds, where the county’s biggest summer event OC Fair has been held annually since 1949.
When the war ended, many veterans returned to the area with their families and began to populate the region.
In 1953, Costa Mesa residents who opposed the Orange County Board of Supervisor’s move to expand an oil drill site and dump on the west side of the town formed the Home Rule Committee and pushed for official cityhood by circulating petitions and newspaper advertisements.
Their effort was successful, and Costa Mesa became a city later that year, with a local government formed. At the time, the city spanned just 3.5 square miles, but would grow to 17 square miles by 1988.
City of the Arts
Within the first 20 years of Costa Mesa’s cityhood, educational institutions and business centers boomed in Orange County. City leaders decided to build a performing arts center so that the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, founded in 1954, could have a concert hall in which to perform.The Segerstrom family, a local Swedish family who immigrated to the U.S. in 1882 and became wealthy landowners and entrepreneurs, donated the funds to build a five-acre performing arts center.
The Segerstrom Center for the Arts opened its doors in 1986, equipped with three theater stages, an arts plaza, four performance halls, and a studio performance space.
The Segerstrom family continued to fund artistic endeavors throughout the city, including the 1.6-acre Noguchi sculpture garden, which houses various plants and artifacts indigenous to California, and the Costa Mesa art walk, which guides pedestrians to more than 20 pieces of public art around the city with a free audio tour available online.
The new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall was added in 2006, named after the founding chairman and his late wife.
Costa Mesa officially adopted the motto “City of the Arts” in 1999 and lives up to the name to this day, with the city showcasing artwork by internationally recognized artists and hosting some of the most renowned theater and orchestra performances in the world.
