Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Laguna Lake history
Bastanchury family. Domingo Bastanchury and his wife, Maria, were Basque immigrants who came to this area in 1870, and immediately bought land in the Fullerton hills for sheep herding. The Bastanchury family acquired more wealth during the oil boom of the 1920s, but their ranch company went bankrupt during the 1930s. At the peak of this family’s success, its holdings were so extensive that all three railroads – the Union Pacific, the Santa Fe and the Pacific Electric -- ran spur lines to the ranch house.
An immigrant boy without education who grew up at Aldudes, Basses-Pyrenees, France, came to Orange County in 1860 and built up a property near Fullerton which became the largest citrus grove in the world.
Domingo Bastanchury was a French Basque rancher, born in the little town of Altubes, in the heart of the Pyrenees mountains, in March, 1838. In 1859 he sailed around South America’s Cape Horn to the present Orange county and became a sheep and cattle herder. He brought them over Signal Hill and into Fullerton.
Beginning in 1885 he began purchasing large tracts of land, first for his herds, then for citrus cultivation, and finally for oil drilling. At one time, the Bastanchury family owned over 4,000 acres of land in Fullerton and surrounding areas. In the early 20th century, the Bastanchury Ranch (later re-named Sunny Hills Ranch) was the largest orange grove in the world.
The first laborers on the Bastanchury Ranch were Native Americans. As the United States policy toward Native Americans became more restrictive, Native Americans (TONGVE & CHUMASH) were replaced by Chinese labor (Until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904), followed by Japanese labor (Until the Alien Land Law of 1913), and finally Mexican labor.
Mexican laborers on the Bastanchury Ranch lived in “citrus towns” that were segregated from the dominant/Anglo community. One was called Mexicali and the other was called Tiajuana. During the Great Depression, whole citrus towns were evacuated and deported back to Mexico, so as to provide unemployed Anglos with jobs. This historical reality is described at length in the book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s by Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez. According to scholar Gilbert Gonzales, author of Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950, these "citrus towns" were pervasive throughout Orange County in the 20th century, and they evolved into the present-day “barrios”.
When this area was the center of the Bastanchury Ranch, the lake was just a low place that gathered water which the Bastanchury Ranch took their service animals to. The ranch had many windmills with pretty easy access to the water table in those days. The water was needed for the Bastanchury orchards which in the 1920s was the biggest in the world. (It was called a ranch because before oranges, lemons and walnuts, the Bastanchury family raised sheep. Bastanchury brought their Basque culture with them.) It was probably wind mills that supplemented the rain water that filled this lake back then. It really isn’t a natural area for a lake in that there’s no creek feeding it.
Bastanchury Water company was the last holdings of the Bastanchury family. And they eventually sold that off. It wasn’t that long ago that Bastanchury Water trucks were constant reminders of what was at one time synonymous with Fullerton. The final owners of the water company are gone too. Only the name remains to be bought and sold, as if the name was a product. When the trucks were seen about town, the water came from a well next to one of Fullerton’s municipal wells on Pioneer, near Gilbert. But even the Fullerton pumps are abandoned. The only thing left is The Bastanchury House. It is comparable in size to the Muckenthaler mansion but in use by a family today. In 2004,
The city decided to empty and dredge the old lake to "improve it" This was 19 years ago and it's NEVER been the same! The only remnants of the old times are a few original trees, a small patch of reeds and a handful of old fly fisherman working the banks and telling stories of the old days.
Laguna Lake history
Bastanchury family. Domingo Bastanchury and his wife, Maria, were Basque immigrants who came to this area in 1870, and immediately bought land in the Fullerton hills for sheep herding. The Bastanchury family acquired more wealth during the oil boom of the 1920s, but their ranch company went bankrupt during the 1930s. At the peak of this family’s success, its holdings were so extensive that all three railroads – the Union Pacific, the Santa Fe and the Pacific Electric -- ran spur lines to the ranch house.
An immigrant boy without education who grew up at Aldudes, Basses-Pyrenees, France, came to Orange County in 1860 and built up a property near Fullerton which became the largest citrus grove in the world.
Domingo Bastanchury was a French Basque rancher, born in the little town of Altubes, in the heart of the Pyrenees mountains, in March, 1838. In 1859 he sailed around South America’s Cape Horn to the present Orange county and became a sheep and cattle herder. He brought them over Signal Hill and into Fullerton.
Beginning in 1885 he began purchasing large tracts of land, first for his herds, then for citrus cultivation, and finally for oil drilling. At one time, the Bastanchury family owned over 4,000 acres of land in Fullerton and surrounding areas. In the early 20th century, the Bastanchury Ranch (later re-named Sunny Hills Ranch) was the largest orange grove in the world.
The first laborers on the Bastanchury Ranch were Native Americans. As the United States policy toward Native Americans became more restrictive, Native Americans (TONGVE & CHUMASH) were replaced by Chinese labor (Until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904), followed by Japanese labor (Until the Alien Land Law of 1913), and finally Mexican labor.
Mexican laborers on the Bastanchury Ranch lived in “citrus towns” that were segregated from the dominant/Anglo community. One was called Mexicali and the other was called Tiajuana. During the Great Depression, whole citrus towns were evacuated and deported back to Mexico, so as to provide unemployed Anglos with jobs. This historical reality is described at length in the book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s by Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez. According to scholar Gilbert Gonzales, author of Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950, these "citrus towns" were pervasive throughout Orange County in the 20th century, and they evolved into the present-day “barrios”.
When this area was the center of the Bastanchury Ranch, the lake was just a low place that gathered water which the Bastanchury Ranch took their service animals to. The ranch had many windmills with pretty easy access to the water table in those days. The water was needed for the Bastanchury orchards which in the 1920s was the biggest in the world. (It was called a ranch because before oranges, lemons and walnuts, the Bastanchury family raised sheep. Bastanchury brought their Basque culture with them.) It was probably wind mills that supplemented the rain water that filled this lake back then. It really isn’t a natural area for a lake in that there’s no creek feeding it.
Bastanchury Water company was the last holdings of the Bastanchury family. And they eventually sold that off. It wasn’t that long ago that Bastanchury Water trucks were constant reminders of what was at one time synonymous with Fullerton. The final owners of the water company are gone too. Only the name remains to be bought and sold, as if the name was a product. When the trucks were seen about town, the water came from a well next to one of Fullerton’s municipal wells on Pioneer, near Gilbert. But even the Fullerton pumps are abandoned. The only thing left is The Bastanchury House. It is comparable in size to the Muckenthaler mansion but in use by a family today. In 2004,
The city decided to empty and dredge the old lake to "improve it" This was 19 years ago and it's NEVER been the same! The only remnants of the old times are a few original trees, a small patch of reeds and a handful of old fly fisherman working the banks and telling stories of the old days.
