Anaheim, California

Anaheim is located in Southern California. The Southern Californian city is the second most populous city in Orange County (behind Santa Ana) and is known for its theme parks, sports teams, and convention center.

It is the site of the Disneyland Resort, a world-famous grouping of theme parks and hotels which opened in 1955, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Honda Center, and Anaheim Convention Center, the largest convention center on the American west coast.

History

In 1857 the city of Anaheim was founded by grape farmers and wine makers from Franconia in Bavaria. The first such settler was Daniel Kraemer. The colony was situated on 1,165 acres.

During the first half of the 1900s, before Disneyland opened its doors to the public, Anaheim was a massive rural community inhabited by orange groves, and the landowners who farmed them. One of the landowners was a man by the name of Bennett Payne Baxter. He came up with many new ideas for irrigating orange groves and shared his ideas with other landowners. He was not only successful, he helped other landowners and businesspeople succeed as well.

Anaheim was selected as the location for Disneyland because of the belief that the vast acres of orange groves, thirty miles southeast of downtown LA, would see major population growth – which indeed they did.