A cow town no more: Tiny La Palma turns 60 this month

Grant Wood famously said, “All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”

The farmers of early La Palma might have shared that sentiment with the painter of “American Gothic.”

Dairy families with names like deVries, De Groot and Bouma helped define the city once known as Dairyland. It wouldn’t officially become La Palma until 1965.

When the city incorporated in 1955, 60 years ago this month, it was to “keep the cows in and the people out,” said Chris Jepsen, assistant archivist for Orange County.

“Ultimately, that didn’t last as property values went up,” he said, noting that the 1950s and ‘60s were unlike any other period in county history in terms of growth and development.

“People were pouring in,” Jepsen said.

As incorporation fever started to take hold, much of the area was in territory-acquisition mode. Little Dairyland just wanted to be left alone to preserve its agricultural community and not be “the next bite,” as Jepsen said.

The cows, though not impervious to development, nonetheless hung around for quite a while. Ron and Elfriede Mac Iver’s book, “Images of America: La Palma,” a largely pictorial journey through the life and times of the city, includes a photo circa 1970 that shows numerous cows lounging under and around a sign announcing “The future home of La Palma Intercommunity Hospital & Medical Center.”

But just as the farmers were forced to leave Los Angeles for Orange County because of encroaching development, so were the farmers of La Palma eventually pushed inland to places like Corona.

The score card today: residents, over 15,000; cows 0.

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Now, as La Palma prepares to mark its 60 years, it can reflect on all the benefits and disadvantages of being Orange County’s smallest — by land mass — city at 1.8 square miles. Villa Park has been known as the smallest city in the county by population.

Elfriede Mac Iver, who gave her age as having “decades behind me,” said she remembers the friendliness of the farmers and the seasonal hay rides and egg rolls.

“Everyone gets along,” added her husband, Ron, 79.

The median household income is $88,000 a year, higher than many other cities. More than once, Money magazine has ranked La Palma as one of the 50 best small towns in America in which to live.

For Mayor Peter Kim, La Palma delivers with good schools and high test scores, low crime, a high rate of volunteerism and a small-town feel.

It’s a “Mayberry town sort of place,” he said.

Of course, that would be a much more diversified Mayberry than the fictional town represented in the “The Andy Griffith Show,” which first aired in 1960. With the influx of people came a new diversity, and La Palma is now recognized as the first Asian-majority city in Orange County.

Kim is of Korean descent, though he was born in the U.S., and a former mayor, Henry Charoen, is a Thai American.

Douglas Dumhart, the city’s community development director, points out the advantages of a commuter city bumping up against Los Angeles County: “It’s 20 minutes from everything, airport, Dodgers, Angels.”

But the city is also struggling with financial setbacks, in part because of its size.

“With a larger city, the economies of scale are on your side,” said Kim, 31, who went to Walker Junior High and John F. Kennedy High School and now works for the state Board of Equalization in Irvine.

La Palma has also seen an erosion of its sales tax revenue and has been struggling, as other cities have, to cover the retirement benefits for city workers, he said.

The City Council over the summer approved the creation of an 11-member citizen committee to examine city spending, by department, look at what is mandated by the state and come up with recommendations by February, Kim said.

Earlier this year, there was concern about whether the annual La Palma Days could be held. It will be, but the Nov. 14 event will also double as the party for the 60th anniversary in October.

“We’ll get through this,” said Kim.

When asked about the possibility of the city having to merge with another, he said he did not think that was a consideration.

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For a little city, La Palma has found itself the subject of some big news stories.

• La Palma Police Chief Eric Nunez and his family had to have protection after being mentioned in Christopher Dorner’s manifesto. Dorner, who had been fired from the Los Angeles Police Department, was the subject of a manhunt in 2013 after a series of shootings targeting police officers and their loved ones. In February of that year, he died during a standoff with police at a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Dorner was part of the La Palma department’s police explorer volunteer program while at Kennedy High School.

•In early June of this year, an arrest was made in a 40-year-old case linked to the city. In late 1974, the badly decomposed body of a Patricia Ann Ross was found in a La Palma garage.

Investigators traced the killing to Larry Stephens, 65, after he was arrested in March in Santa Rosa on suspicion of domestic violence, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Stephens had submitted a DNA sample to the Santa Rosa Police Department, and it matched blood collected from the bedspread and window in Ross’ apartment, prosecutor Larry Yellin told the Los Angeles Times.

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Travel east on Valley View Street in Buena Park and it’s hard to know when you’ve hit La Palma. The only giveaways are the distinctive road signs. It’s part of what Dumhart characterizes as the homogeneity of the county.

One or two buildings and the nostalgia are what remain from the Dairyland days of La Palma. Today the city is a community of older-style homes — a lot of the homeowners are the original buyers, Kim said — sharing space with 168 acres of commercial development.

Although the city is largely built-out, a subdivision of about a half-dozen homes is underway, the mayor said, adding that an additional little project of two or three single-family houses is also under consideration.

Kim emphasizes the generosity and close-knit feel of the place, likening the bigger cities to mega churches, where “nobody knows you.”

On a recent day at the La Palma library, children’s librarian Patricia Campbell and senior library clerk Antonette Ferguson approached the needs of patrons with an uncommon gusto.

And a teenager smiled at a stranger.