Countdown to 2000: Changing lifestyles

Noaki Schwartz

Almost a century ago, when Newport Beach was still a fishing port

and Costa Mesa was primarily farmland, life was relatively unfettered and

simple.

Newport Beach, known to some as the Promised Land -- and to the

less-reverent, Gospel Swamp -- was sparsely populated and dotted with

residents traveling the town’s dirt roads on horseback.

The McFadden brothers’ steam ship -- James McFadden owned most of the

land at the time -- was used to trade lumber and merchandise in exchange

for grain and other farm produce. McFadden Wharf was the town center.

And despite the rowdy image of seafaring folk it now has, Newport was a

“dry town” early in the decade. That is, it could not legally have a

saloon or sell liquor.

But this didn’t stop the tourists who came to Newport to swim or rent

rowboats. Other visitors would go to Rocky Point (now Corona del Mar) to

gather abalone and explore caves.

It was not until the Red Cars of the Pacific Electric train reached

Newport in 1905 that the struggling community finally gained a link with

the outside world. The arrival of the trains hastened the demand for

self-government and incorporation in 1906.

Costa Mesa, on the other hand, was less active as a patchwork of

agricultural communities, including the boomtown of Fairview, the village

of Harper and the farming community Paularino, where a cluster of people

from Boston had settled.

Each community primarily consisted of a few scattered farm houses, and

there was a post office, a public school building and railroad stations.

The first commercial building in Harper was the two-story Ozment store,

built in 1908. It carried everything from groceries to yard goods to

chicken feed.

SOURCES”Newport Beach: The First Century, 1888-1988,” James Felton, Ed.,

1988

“A Slice of Orange: The History of Costa Mesa,” Edrick J. Miller, 1970.