48 Fun Facts About Anaheim

Which Orange County band formed in Anaheim in 1986 and later named an album after nearby Disneyland?

No Doubt. Gwen Stefani grew up in Anaheim, and the breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom took its title from what the guitarist's seventh-grade teacher used to call Disneyland.

Settlers from which country founded Anaheim in 1857?

Germany. Fifty German settlers living in San Francisco, most of them mechanics and craftsmen with no experience of wine-making, pooled their money in 1857 to plant vineyards.

Which river watered Anaheim's first vineyards?

The Santa Ana. A ditch dug from it brought water to the dry plain the founders had bought, so they joined the river's name to heim, their word for home.

Which future golf champion graduated from Anaheim's Western High School in 1994?

Tiger Woods grew up next door in Cypress and won the national Junior Amateur title while a 15-year-old Western student. His classmates duly voted him Most Likely to Succeed.

Anaheim's founders bought their land from what kind of estate?

A Mexican-era rancho. Juan Pacífico Ontiveros had moved north to a new ranch the year before, and in 1857 he sold the settlers 1,165 acres of the old one at $2 an acre.

Which burger chain grew out of a drive-in barbecue restaurant opened in Anaheim in 1945?

Carl's Jr. Carl Karcher started with a hot dog cart bought by borrowing against his car, then opened Carl's Drive-In Barbecue in Anaheim; the 'Jr.' outlets were its smaller offspring.

What destroyed Anaheim's wine industry in 1884–85?

A grapevine disease, new to science at the time, killed the vineyards within two seasons. Growers called it Anaheim disease; it is now known as Pierce's disease, after the plant pathologist who first described it.

Before choosing Anaheim, Walt Disney planned his park for a small site beside his studio in which city?

Burbank. The plans soon outgrew the lot, so Disney hired researchers to find room, and their study of population trends, land prices and climate pointed to 160 acres of Anaheim farmland.

Anaheim once belonged to which county?

Los Angeles. Orange County was split off from it only in 1889, by which time Anaheim was already an incorporated town, so the city is older than the county it now belongs to.

Which famous Polish actress settled in Anaheim in the 1870s?

Helena Modjeska came with a party of Polish friends, among them the future Nobel novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, to live off the land. None of them could farm, the venture failed, and she went back to the stage.

Which berry, made famous by Knott's Berry Farm, is named after an Anaheim park superintendent?

Boysenberry. Rudolph Boysen had given up on his hybrid, so Walter Knott took a few scraggly, dying vines, nursed them back to health on his own farm and named the fruit after him.

Which secret society won control of Anaheim's city council in 1924?

The Ku Klux Klan held the council for less than a year: its opponents got hold of the secret membership list and spread the names around town, and voters recalled the councilmen in 1925.

Which actor co-hosted the live television special on Disneyland's opening day in 1955?

Ronald Reagan anchored the live show with Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings, a quarter of a century before he became president. All three reunited at the park in 1990 for its 35th anniversary.

What grew on the 160 acres where Disneyland was built?

Orange and walnut trees. Clearing them and building the park drained Walt Disney's funds before he could buy the land around it, so other people's motels and shops soon boxed the park in.

Which TV network broadcast Disneyland's dedication live in July 1955?

ABC had agreed to help pay for the park in return for a weekly Disneyland television series, and owned a share of it for the first five years. Four decades later Disney bought the whole network.

Which Hollywood producer built and ran the original Disneyland Hotel?

Jack Wrather, a Texas oilman turned producer, stepped in because building the park had drained Walt Disney's funds and the big hotel chains said no. Disney only bought the hotel from his company in 1988.

Which cancelled Anaheim theme park plan gave way to Disney California Adventure?

WestCOT, a West Coast answer to Florida's Epcot, was announced in 1991 and dropped in 1995 as its costs climbed and Disneyland Paris lost money. Executives then settled on a cheaper California theme.

The 2012 re-dedication of California Adventure added Buena Vista Street and which area?

Cars Land. It capped a five-year, $1.1 billion rebuild that cost more than the original park, which had disappointed from the day it opened.

A family beside Disneyland refused Disney's offers for 20 years so that it could keep farming which crop?

Strawberries. Hiroshi Fujishige turned down millions for 56 acres he had bought for $3,500 and became a local folk hero; his family agreed to sell only in 1998, weeks before he died.

Before moving to Anaheim, the Angels were tenants in which ballpark?

Dodger Stadium. The Angels spent four seasons there as the Dodgers' tenants and called the place Chavez Ravine, until their own ballpark opened in Anaheim in 1966.

Which NFL team played at Anaheim Stadium from 1980 to 1994?

Los Angeles Rams. To fit them in, the open ballpark was walled in with about 23,000 extra seats, and it was opened up again only after they left for Missouri in 1995.

What is Angel Stadium's unofficial nickname?

The Big A is also a thing you can see: a 230-foot letter A with a halo that once held the scoreboard in left field. It was hauled out to the edge of the car park when the stadium was enclosed for football.

Which star won two unanimous MVP awards as an Angel yet never reached the playoffs with the team?

Shohei Ohtani both pitched and hit for the Angels in Anaheim from 2018 to 2023, then left for the Dodgers on a record contract and won the World Series in his first season there.

Which motorsport championship has run at Angel Stadium since 1976?

AMA Supercross. Each winter truckloads of dirt bury the baseball field under jumps, and the stadium often stages two rounds a season, the first of them, Anaheim 1, as the series opener.

Who founded the Angels franchise in 1961?

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, only wanted the new team's radio rights for his stations. Baseball's executives were so taken with his pitch that they talked him into owning the club instead.

Which team did the Angels beat in seven games to win the 2002 World Series?

San Francisco Giants. They led Game 6 by five runs in the seventh inning, but the Angels came back to win it and then took Game 7 for the club's first championship.

Which owner renamed the team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in 2005?

Arte Moreno wanted 'Los Angeles' to sell the team across Southern California, and kept 'of Anaheim' only because the stadium lease required the city's name. Anaheim sued over it and lost.

The Angels' Rally Monkey was born in 2000 from a clip of which film?

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Two scoreboard operators dropped its jumping monkey into a ninth-inning deficit, the Angels won, and the team hired a capuchin called Katie to film new clips.

When new owners bought Anaheim's NHL team from Disney, which word did they drop from its name?

Mighty. Disney had founded the club in 1993 and named it after its own 1992 film The Mighty Ducks; the Samueli family bought it in 2005 and kept the ducks but not the movie title.

Which Canadian team did the Ducks beat in the 2007 Stanley Cup Final?

Ottawa. The Senators lost four games to one, and the Ducks became the first California team to lift the trophy, ahead of the state's two older clubs, the Kings and the Sharks.

Before Honda bought the naming rights in 2006, what was Anaheim's Honda Center called?

Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. A bottled-water company bought the name for $15 million months after the arena opened, which made a pond for the ducks; Honda paid four times as much to replace it.

Which NBA team played a handful of home games each season at Anaheim's arena from 1994 to 1999?

Los Angeles Clippers. They drew nearly 16,000 a night in Anaheim against about 9,200 at home in Los Angeles, and talked for years about moving south for good before choosing a new downtown arena.

Which convention, founded by brothers Hank and John Green, moved to Anaheim in 2012?

VidCon. The Greens, YouTubers themselves, started it in a Century City hotel in 2010 with about 1,400 people, and by 2019 the Anaheim gathering was drawing some 75,000.

Which film saga brought its official fan convention, Celebration, to the Anaheim Convention Center in 2015?

Star Wars. The 2015 gathering opened with a new trailer for The Force Awakens, and the whole hall leapt up and roared when Han Solo appeared and said 'Chewie, we're home.'

Which music industry trade event is held each January at the Anaheim Convention Center?

NAMM Show. It is one of the biggest gatherings in music, yet the public can't buy a ticket: entry is kept to instrument makers, dealers, journalists and the artists they invite.

Which comedian's first job was selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland as a boy?

Steve Martin grew up in nearby Garden Grove and worked at the park from its first summer. He spent his free time in its magic shop, later took a job in one, and perfected his tricks and juggling there.

Anaheim's Packing House food hall occupies a 1919 packing house built for which brand?

Sunkist. It is the last packing house standing in a city that once lived on citrus, and since 2014 food stalls have filled the floor where the fruit used to be graded and boxed.

ARTIC, Anaheim's transit hub that opened in 2014, is known for what entrance feature?

A 120-foot glass wall closes one end of a curved shell covered in air-filled plastic pillows. The pillows let sunlight through to light the hall, and after dark the arched roof glows in changing colours.

What is the name of the redevelopment district surrounding Angel Stadium?

Platinum Triangle. Anaheim is turning the low-rise industrial land around its ballpark and arena into what it hopes will be a downtown for the whole county, with high-rises and mixed-use streets.

Which neighbouring city, just northwest of Anaheim, is home to Knott's Berry Farm?

Buena Park. Walter Knott's berry stand there drew such queues for chicken dinners that in 1940 he began a replica ghost town to amuse them, the start of a theme park 15 years older than Disneyland.

The master-planned community in Anaheim's eastern third is called what?

Anaheim Hills. A rancher sold his foothill land in 1970 and an oil company's developers planned 7,000 homes on it, giving a flat farm town a hillside suburb that still keeps an identity of its own.

Which pitcher threw four no-hitters for the California Angels between 1973 and 1975?

Nolan Ryan. The Mets had traded him west for a shortstop who flopped in New York, and the young pitcher they gave up went on to throw four of his record seven no-hitters as an Angel.

Anaheim's nearest airline airports are Long Beach and one named after which film star?

John Wayne. Orange County renamed its airport in 1979, the year the actor died; he had lived in nearby Newport Beach, and a nine-foot bronze statue of him now stands in the terminal.

Which Indigenous people lived in the Anaheim area before the Spanish arrived?

Tongva. When the first Spanish expedition camped nearby in 1769, villagers came out to greet it with gifts and their chief made a speech; three years later a local boy was among the first converts at the San Gabriel mission.

Which 1988 comedy ends at a California Angels game where a hypnotised Reggie Jackson tries to shoot the Queen?

The Naked Gun. To find the assassin, Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin knocks out the home-plate umpire and takes his place, so that he can frisk every batter for weapons as they come up.

Which Anaheim district along Brookhurst Street won official recognition from the city in 2022?

Little Arabia. Its bakeries, halal butchers and hookah cafes had made the street a hub for Arab Americans, and business owners lobbied for decades before the council put the name on the map.

Anaheim's city limits run nearly 20 miles east to which county's line?

Riverside. The city stretches along the 91 freeway to the county line, so one council governs both the hotel strip around Disneyland and open, unbuilt land at its far eastern end.

Anaheim's Muzeo museum includes which kind of 1908 building?

A Carnegie library. Andrew Carnegie's money built libraries in several Orange County towns and Anaheim's is the only one still standing; it lent books until 1963 and now shows local history instead.