A Place Where Wanderers Can Put Down Roots

Twilight can be magical at the Orangeland Recreational Vehicle Park.

As natural light fades, the fairy-like twinkle of lamps and television sets gradually fills the night. The smell of barbecuing chicken pervades the air, evoking the outdoors and summer. And over the trailers and motor homes, a blanket of orange trees seems to drop its branches to within easy reach of any fruit-loving camper.

“It’s still like an orange grove,” Lucille Adams, 75, says of the park she has inhabited for nearly 22 years. “That’s what makes it seem more like a neighborhood instead of just camping out.”

Eddie Grijalva, 66, a historical researcher with deep ancestral roots here, agrees. “I love it out here,” he said. “I get up every morning and am thankful for another day.”

Here at the edge of Katella Avenue in Orange, a community of unusual dwellers has a lifestyle symbolic of the area itself. Their homes, resting on rubber tires instead of concrete foundations, speak of life on the road. Yet they stay here year after year, putting down roots in an ever-changing landscape.

“It’s just like home,” Adams says of the 40-by-10-foot trailer--complete with a garden, but no natural gas--that has contained much of her life. “I feel safe here--like having a house with a yard.”

Orangeland has served as home to thousands of seekers along the Katella corridor since opening its gates in 1972. That was the year after Eldredge Welton--himself a seeker from Waterbury, Conn.--first saw the orange grove here and envisioned it filled with trailers. Since then, Katella has become one of the county’s busiest thoroughfares, tying together a diversity of commercial activities and lifestyles.

“My parents love traveling,” said Cindy Wimbish, Welton’s daughter and park manager, in explaining her father’s obsession. “Dad’s dream was to have his own business, and when Mom finally gave him permission, he did.”

That business now sits on about eight acres a stone’s throw from Katella. It features 212 spaces equipped with water, electricity and hookups for telephones and cable TV. It’s like a mini-city, with pool, spa, laundry facilities, shuffleboard courts, billiard table, exercise room, general store, mailboxes, barbecue area, recreation room for Tuesday night bingo, and a daily Disneyland shuttle.

And in a nod to the parcel’s citrus-scented past, about 200 orange trees stand preserved from the original grove.

“We wanted to keep that little bit of Orange County,” Wimbish explained. “We encourage people to pick the oranges.”

What makes the place unusual, though, is the kind of orange pickers it attracts.

About a third of them, according to Wimbish, are “dailies”--vacationers in the area to see Disneyland and other attractions who park their vehicles for $35 a day. Some of those, Wimbish says, are snowbirds--those from cold climates who winter in Southern California.

By far the largest contingent of Orangeland residents, however, comprises the people who rent their spaces for $425 a month--and end up staying for years. People like Adams, the park’s longest continuous resident, who moved here from Detroit with her husband and two teenage children in 1977.

That happened, she said, after her son and his father visited the West Coast on a two-week vacation in the family’s motor home. “They called me and said, ‘Sell everything, we’re moving,’ ” Adams said. “I took them at their word.”

Eventually the two children grew up and left home. Adams’ husband died in 1988, shortly after trading the motor home for a more spacious trailer. Since then, the avid scrabble player says, she’s lived alone in the park enjoying its abundant amenities, including quiet summer evenings and frequent walks amid the citrus trees.

“The only drawback,” Adams says, “is not having natural gas. If I’m going to bake, I have to make sure I have a full tank of propane.”

There are, of course, a variety of reasons for making an RV park home.

Dick and Lee Schneider moved from Oregon to Southern California in 1993 to be closer to their children but couldn’t afford a house. So they came to Orangeland and became accustomed to life in a motor home.

“I like it,” said Dick Schneider, 62, who keeps a car in the park for commuting to his warehouse job in Lake Forest. “Ninety-nine percent of the neighbors here are friendly, whereas if you live in a regular home on a street, you hardly ever meet your neighbors.”

One resident said he recently moved from a Stanton apartment to a trailer at Orangeland to allow himself mobility for travel.

“This is what I’ve always wanted to do,” said Barry Kolsoozian. “I want to see our country, and this is the best way to go.”

And an investment consultant said he spends every other week at the park to conduct business for clients who have no idea that he’s based out of state.

Whatever their reasons for being here, those whose lives evolve over wheels instead of foundations are united by the shared recognition of the essential transience of the human condition, the ultimate impermanence of the edifices we erect.

Nowhere is this more evident than along Katella Avenue, a street that has seen its share of changes over the past hundred years.

Just ask Grijalva, a man whose presence at Orangeland is oddly fitting in light of his family’s past. Nearly 200 years ago, Grijalva’s ancestor--Juan Pablo Grijalva--petitioned the Spanish government for use of the land on which the RV park now sits. The 63,000 acres he oversaw eventually became Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, Orange County’s first rancho and now home to several of its cities. And the hillside adobe he built--believed to be first of its kind outside Mission San Juan Capistrano--is now a historic site near a street that bears the family name.

As the crow flies, Grijalva’s 20-foot trailer is about three miles from the ancestral adobe.

“That’s something real special,” said the man who is descended from both the Gabrieleno Indians who once occupied this land and the Spaniards who later took it away. “I feel like I belong here. I couldn’t have picked a better place.”