Interest in Orange County has never been stronger since the hit television program rechristened it The OC.• Orange County is the home to the World's first theme park, one of California's most important missions, Richard Nixon's birthplace, and some of the best surfing beaches on the West coast.• Sixty-nine pairs of photographs show how this sun-drenched location looked before Los Angeles spread southward, illustrating the impact of Southern California's economy and population explosion on the landscape.• Archival photographs show how Orange County still reflects the influences of the Spanish missionaries who settled here in 1769. Side-by-side images of the Mission of San Juan Capistrano — as it was then and as it is today — make for a fascinating view of California history.• Everyone knows that Disneyland put Anaheim on the map, but visitors had long enjoyed the pleasures of the coastline, either camping out at Crystal Cove or enjoying the beach at Huntington with a forest of oil pumping wellheads as a backdrop.• From Seal Beach to Dana Point, discover the world-famous beach cities of Orange County such as Newport, Huntington and Laguna Beaches, as they were then and as they are now.