George Key Ranch Historic Park

The George Key Ranch is the oldest standing house in Placentia and the centrepiece of a small county-run historic park. The two-storey wood-frame home is open for guided tours; outside, the surviving citrus trees, the rose garden, and the picnic lawn give a sense of the rural landscape that defined this corner of California a century ago.

Admission is free and tour times are limited — usually weekends only — so check the OC Parks calendar before driving over. It is a small site but it tells a big story about how Orange County got its name and its identity.

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A story
George Key planted some of the earliest Valencia orange groves in Orange County, and the citrus boom that gave the county its name began in places exactly like this. The ranch house, built in 1898 in the Queen Anne style, still stands at its original site with a small surviving grove — a sliver of preserved farmland where there are now nothing but tract houses.