History
Sculpted by the Santa Ana River and carved during the Pleistocene Epoch, mammoth, bison, and giant sloth fossils have been discovered in sedimentary deposits of an older marine terrace. Until 1862, the Newport Bay flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean. The earliest human inhabitants lived in the bay some 9,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago, the Bay was home to the Gabrielino Indians, who lived off the fish and plants inhabiting the area. Following the California mission period, these Native Americans had all but disappeared from the area. Since then, the area above the bay was used for grazing by cattle and sheep. In 1870, the steamwheel steamer "Vaquero" gave Newport its namesake after delivering loads of lumber in a "new port." Acquired by the Irvine Company in 1864, the bay was used as a salt works from the 1930s until 1969, when the land used for the salt works was destroyed by flooding. It was not until the 1960s did preservation of the Newport Back Bay begin, after the area was designated to become a water-skiing area. After ten years of lawsuits enacted by concerned citizens, did the State of California Department of Fish and Game designate the undeveloped portions of the Upper Newport Bay an ecological reserve. . In the mid 1980's, Orange County incorporated the bluffs surrounding the bay to the ecological reserve. In 1989, the Orange County accepted the 140-acre Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve.
Read more about this topic: Newport Back Bay
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)