Be Careful as a Writer to Not Misquote History

If you are going to discuss history in an article or a novel, be sure to not miss quote the reality. If you make a mistake on an Internet Blog, or forum someone is sure to know the difference and set you straight. Thus often if you do not know what you are talking about it is best to be quiet rather than prove yourself a fool.

Let me give you a recent for instance, where a gentleman made a statement about Orange Orchards between Los Angeles and Santa Monica, CA in the 1950s and how those beautiful trees were cut down and the fragrances are no longer? Sounds romantic right? Well, sure but it is incorrect.

You see, the Orange Groves and Jail fragrances in Los Angeles were only temporary and not so prolific (started in 1882), and they were not the natural sage brush of the coastal desert there, they replaced the habitat of desert turtles, rats and locusts, which were killed to make way. Later as the Chandler Family brought in water with the help of engineers like Mullholland, as much corruption was proclaimed to have occurred to bring the water in and buy up the land on the cheap, yes a few groves were planted there, not many.

Much of the Fragrances of the Orange Groves came from Orange County and the Valley. The very few around Los Angeles would not have been able to have been smelled from Santa Monica, as the constant 15 mph offshore breeze was blowing the other way into LA and they could hardly smell of orange groves, as there were bean fields in Beverly Hills and oil fields in past that. Today Hyperion (super sewer treatment plant) is the smell of the day, but perhaps it beats the smell of the oil fields back then.

Nevertheless, today 460 square miles of concrete and 16.5 million people cannot be wrong in Southern CA, they have chosen a different life and way of living, one they enjoy and they do not wish to change and they vote. They prefer this to the desert rats, rodents and locusts that were once there before Los Angeles became known.

It was the Owens River Bond project, the Chandlers and Mullholland who made the difference ask Upton Sinclair. Any orange trees in LA were pretty much gone by the 1950s, although there where hundreds of thousands in Orange County, Corona, etc. The dairy cows replaced the trees and now the cows are gone too, and isn't it a shame they do not have that smell any more. What fragrance was lost?