Soon towns had sprung up everywhere across the county. In Laguna Beach because of the pretty bay. In El Modena because there was good land for vineyards, and the water from Santiago Creek. In Fullerton because the train line passed that way. And so on. Developers bought pieces of the ranchos, set out some streets, held a big party and brought out some of the crowds arriving in Los Angeles for a free lunch and a sales pitch. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Towns like Yorba, Hewes Park, McPherson, Fairview, Olinda, Saint James, Atwood, Carlton, Catalina-on-the-Main, and Smeltzer, didn’t last much longer then their opening days. Others, like Buena Park, Capistrano Beach, Villa Park, Placentia, Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar, and Costa Mesa, survived and grew.

In 1887 this growth was accelerated when the Santa Fe Railroad completed a line across the continent to Los Angeles and immediately began a rate war with the Southern Pacific, which had been the only line. Fares that had been $125 from Omaha plunged to a rate war special of $1 before leveling off at around $25 for a year or two. The trickle of settlers became a small flood, and sixty towns were founded in forty years.

The only area of Orange County that did not experience this blossoming of towns was the great landholding of James Irvine. Irvine came penniless from England to San Francisco during the gold rush, and engaged in land speculation in the city until he was rich. Then he and his partners moved to southern California, and they bought the entirety of the old Ranchos San Joaquín and Lomas de Santiago, which meant that, after Irvine bought out his partners, he owned one-fifth of all the land in Orange County, in a broad band that extended from the ocean far into the Santa Ana Mountains. His land crossed all the possible train routes from Los Angeles to San Diego, and he was powerful enough to hold off the Southern Pacific Railroad, which could be said of no one else in the state; his ranchers fought off forced efforts by the Southern Pacific construction crews to push a line through, and he granted permission of passage to the Santa Fe Railroad just so he could balk Southern Pacific for good.

The Irvine land itself was kept free of new towns, and after a decade or two of sheep ranching it was cultivated, in hay, wheat, oats, alfalfa, barley, and lima beans, and much later in orange groves. For a hundred years the marked distinction between the heavily developed northwestern half of Orange County, and the nearly empty southeastern half, was due to the 172 square miles of the Irvine Ranch, and Irvine and his heirs’ policy of keeping the land free.