Living in Laguna Woods and the Orange County coast

Laguna Woods Living: Hometown Pleasures

The Look, Sound and Feel of the OC Coast

"Another perfect day in paradise" sums up hometown sentiment -- and we current residents of Laguna Woods and the Orange County coast are only the latest in a long line of admirers. The first Spanish explorers to visit here overland were reminded of their own homes when they marveled at the "live oaks (and) abundance of Castilian roses" gracing our hillsides and arroyos. Yankee mariner Richard Henry Dana was so taken by our coastal headlands rising out of the surging Pacific he praised this as "the only romantic spot in California."

The raw physical beauty of our environment -- under warm and sunny skies -- is what makes the Orange County coast unique. The following links take you to the outdoors we locals love -- the beaches and harbors, parks and wilderness areas that offer so much in year round recreation:

Beaches and Harbors

Aliso Beach

Capistrano Beach

Corona Del Mar State Beach

Laguna Beach coastline

Salt Creek Beach

San Clemente State Beach

San Onofre State Beach

Dana Point Harbor

Sailing and Events Center

Newport Harbor

Parks and Wilderness Areas

Orange County Great Park

Crystal Cove State Park

O'Neill Regional Park

More county parks

Caspers Wilderness Park

More wilderness parks

Cleveland National Forest

Golf

Golf courses across the county

Habitat for Humanity Annual Golf Tournament

The Look of the OC Coast

The wild beauty of Laguna Beach was first captured on an artist's canvas in the waning years of the 1800s. As the 1900s dawned, a homegrown art colony was finding an identity as the Laguna Art Association.

In the depths of the Great Depression the association of artists staged a week-long summer festival in hopes of attracting visitors here for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. The beachside village transformed itself into a community-wide art exhibit with open air galleries and showings in downtown businesses and neighborhood homes. There was a parade, festivities, and a pageant staged to celebrate the masters like none seen before -- on an open air stage they breathed life into classical works of art. The entire week was a resounding success.

What evolved from those humble beginnings is now known to art lovers throughout the world as the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters. And the host city is now home and destination for countless artists whose canvases are splashed with the crashing waves of its rugged coastline and colored with the hues of its hills and canyons.

The venues that have brought the Orange County coast world renown for its vibrant arts scene are found in these links:

Fine Arts

Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters

The Irvine Museum

Laguna Art Museum

Orange County Museum of Art

Sawdust Festival

Popular Arts

Newport Beach Film Festival

Coach House Concerts

Mission Viejo Children's Art Festival

Laguna Outreach Community Arts

Performing Arts

Orange County Performing Arts Center

Philharmonic Society of Orange County

Pacific Symphony

Orange County Children's Theatre

Orange County Opera

More OC arts resources

The Sound of the OC Coast

Orange County would make a mark on pop culture in the middle years of the century. The swallows of Mission San Juan Capistrano would inspire an unforgettable ballad. And a new style of rock and roll would emerge from the pleasures of surfing the beaches from Trestles to the Wedge to Surf City.

In 1939, a love song by Leon Rene called "When The Swallows Come Back to Capistrano" enchanted romantics around the world. The annual migration of cliff swallows from their winter home in Argentina to San Juan Capistrano was already an event locally because of Los Angeles radio coverage. But the appeal of the song set off a world wide phenomenon, launching an annual pilgrimage to the mission town on St. Joseph's Day. The winged homecoming became a festive celebration of spring with a Swallows Day Parade and Mercado highlighting the Fiesta de las Golondrinas.

In the early 1960s, the popularity of surfing crested all along the Southern California coast. A young guitar slinger named Dick Dale heard crashing waves in the reverb of a Stratocaster-Showman combo dreamed up with Leo Fender in his Fullerton shop. Dale and the Del-Tones plugged in at Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa and out thundered the "Orange County Sound." Surf music swept the nation. And when Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys added pop lyrics and heavenly harmonies, the burgeoning California youth culture had its soundtrack.

These links open doors to the history of the Orange County coast and the cultural treasures of our past:

Mission San Juan Capistrano

Fiesta de las Golondrinas

Los Rios Adobe

Heritage Hill Historic Park

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art

Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum

The Feel of the OC Coast

Nowadays motion picture and television marketers like to slap an "OC" on the title of a generic melodrama glamorizing an imaginary local lifestyle. And in many of them -- leave it to Hollywood -- not a frame of video was shot in Orange County.

But then, the interplay of historical fact and mythical fantasy has a tradition all its own around here -- from the legend of Ramona, to the tales of Zorro, to Walter Knott's Ghost Towns, Walt Disney's Frontierland and John Wayne's American West.

Orange County would become a world-class tourist destination in the 1950s with the development of the original theme park, Disneyland, the growth of Knott's Berry Farm into a competing amusement park, and a host of related attractions in Anaheim and Buena Park like the Hollywood Wax Museum and various theme restaurants.

But, unlike the Hollywood fantasies of Orange County and its coast, the true feel of the place we call home is a bright, sunny and warm lifestyle as inviting as an ocean breeze off the Pacific.

Come join us in Laguna Woods and share the pleasures of our very own hometown and those of our neighbors. Come enjoy the look, the sound, and the feel of our Orange County coastal community.

Rancho Santa Margarita

San Clemente

San Juan Capistrano

Tustin

Welcome home!

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