Epoxy

Orange County

Southern California, California, USA

Also known as The OC, Newport Beach

When the name Orange County was proposed in 1872, there was not a single orange grove in it. The name was a sales pitch.

Southern California was being sold to easterners as a semi-tropical paradise, and the name fit the pitch. The Santa Ana lawyer who drafted the separation bill, Victor Montgomery, reckoned it would draw settlers better than any pamphlet could. A historian of the period called the choice a sordid piece of real estate work.

Grain and grapes were what people actually grew. The county finally broke off from Los Angeles in 1889, and the town now called Orange was known then as Richland, so the name was not borrowed from it either.

The pitch worked. Settlers came, planted citrus, and by about 1900 oranges were the county's main crop. Then the land was worth more under houses and the groves came out. The name outlasted them.

Details

Feature: Coastline
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Maple
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: February 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Orange County map by Keyway

How this one was made

This is the one where most of what can go wrong is on the same board. Maple is the palest wood we use, so blue creeping into open grain would show instantly, and the seal had to hold on the vertical walls inside every channel as well as on the surface. The pour runs wall to wall, so the whole perimeter was dammed, then dammed again between the blue and the black inland detail so the two would not meet. The coastal creeks and the inland rivers are hair thin, and thin is where air lodges. Most of the hours on this board went into those.