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Historical Resources Evaluation Report <br />June 2019 Fairview Street Improvements and Bridge Replacement Project <br />Spurgeon was the driving force behind the city until his death in 1915. He was responsible <br />for building an artesian well and small water tower to supply the residents' water in 1869 <br />and constructing a road to make access to Anaheim and the Wells Fargo stage easier before <br />Wells Fargo opened an office in Santa Ana in 1874 (Goddard and Goddard 1988). Spurgeon <br />ran a small general store and, in 1870, he became postmaster (Ibid.). In 1886, when the city <br />incorporated with a population of 2,000, he became the first mayor and when Orange <br />County was formed in 1889, Santa Ana was chosen as the county seat and Spurgeon was <br />elected chairman of the County Board of Supervisors (Ibid.). By 1887-88, the Santa Fe trains <br />reached Santa Ana and in 1906 the Red Car from Los Angeles ran along Fourth Street on the <br />new Pacific Electric line (Ibid.). In 1892, the school graduated its first class of three high <br />school boys and by 1898, there were 27 high school graduates (Ibid.). In 1893, Spurgeon <br />donated the land where the County courthouse was built in 1901 and in 1903, a Carnegie <br />Library was built on land donated by Spurgeon at the northwest corner of Fifth and <br />Sycamore (Ibid.). <br />In 1909, Glenn L. Martin (1886-1955), the third American to design, build, and fly his own <br />plane, built a plane in the abandoned Methodist Church at 200 N. Main (approximately two <br />miles east of the APE; Goddard and Goddard 1988). He flew eight feet off the ground for a <br />distance of 100 feet (Ibid.). By 1912, he had founded the Glenn L. Martin Company, <br />headquartered in Santa Ana, which manufactured the Martin T, a training biplane for the <br />Army (Ibid.). In 1916, he merged his company with the original Wright Company and left <br />California (Ibid.). <br />Like most southern California communities, Santa Ana experienced growth and prosperity <br />during most of the 1920s followed by hard times in the 1930s. In 1939, ten years into the <br />Depression, the City of Santa Ana took an option on 400 acres near the community of <br />Fairview and hired a Washington lobbyist (Hallan-Gibson 1986:217). The City offered to <br />lease the land to the government for $1 per year in exchange for a military base (Hallan- <br />Gibson 1986:218) and succeeded in getting the War Department to award Santa Ana a <br />facility (Santa Ana Army Air Base, SAAAB) totaling over 1,200 acres (Hallan-Gibson <br />1986:219). It covered the 400 acres offered by the City plus the old settlement of Fairview <br />and was commissioned in 1942 (Hallan-Gibson 1986:217-220). In addition to SAAAB <br />(approximately 5.5 miles southeast of the APE), the War Department put the West Coast <br />Army Air Corps Training Command Headquarters in downtown Santa Ana (roughly 1.5 miles <br />east of the APE). SAAAB and the Training Command HQ were closed soon after the war, but <br />they played a major role in the post-war boom, when many servicemen who had been <br />trained or stationed there returned to southern California seeking jobs and housing. <br />By 1945, a shortage of housing, the return of six million servicemen, and continued <br />population growth produced the largest building boom in the country's history (Ames and <br />McClelland 2002). Spurred by builder's credits and liberalized terms for VA and FHA <br />approved mortgages, construction of single-family residences increased from 114,000 in <br />1944, to 937,000 in 1946 (Ibid.). The classic response to this huge growth was Levittown in <br />Long Island, New York, which eventually had over 17,500 simplified Cape Cod style homes <br />7 <br />