Atwood is a small predominantly
Mexican-American
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
neighborhood in
Placentia, California
Placentia () is a city in northern Orange County, California. The population was 51,233 during the 2020 census, up from 46,488 in the 2000 census. This includes the community of Atwood, which is included in the city of Placentia, and is loca ...
.
Atwood's unofficial boundaries are defined roughly as the area of Placentia in the square formed by Orangethorpe Avenue, Van Buren Street, Lakeview Road, and Miraloma Avenue. There is a post office in Atwood with a ZIP code of 92811. However, this ZIP code is only used for PO boxes. All non-PO box addresses in Atwood are listed as "Placentia" by the
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
(with the exception of the post office itself: 1679 E. Orangethorpe Avenue, Atwood, CA 92811).
There is a small business area of the community along Orangethorpe Ave. that includes the post office and restaurants, markets, a bar and other stores that cater to the area's predominantly Latino population. The ''Parque de Los Ninos'' city park can be found in the area along with a portion of a busy line of the
BNSF Railway
BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...
that runs parallel to Orangethorpe Ave.
History
In 1887, the town was formerly named Richfield after the oil wells that pervaded the area. The town name was eventually changed to Atwood, after W. J. Atwood, an oil company executive, and was formerly an unincorporated town within
Orange County
Orange County most commonly refers to:
*Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Orange County may also refer to:
U.S. counties
*Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando
*Orange County, Indiana
*Orange County, New ...
before being annexed by the city of Placentia in the early 1970s.
At the turn of the 20th century, as described by the scholar Jody Vallejo, "Mexicans who did not live in
East Los Angeles
East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...
were
segregated in suburbs in the
Los Angeles metropolitan region, often referred to as '
company towns
A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...
' that revolved around industry and manufacturing ''colonias'', which, in
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
, were typically segregated citrus-worker villages." Orange County was divided into eighteen small towns organized around the citrus industry which included the segregated company towns of predominantly Mexican-Americans, who "were isolated from the white population (often across railroad tracks or fenced in) in terms of housing, schools, entertainment, and even baseball teams". This legacy of segregation is the reason why Atwood, as well as other "distinct multi-generational Mexican American-concentrated neighborhoods that are working class and remain segregated, separated from affluent
gated communities
A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. ...
only blocks away" such as
Casa Blanca,
Riverside
Riverside may refer to:
Places Australia
* Riverside, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania
Canada
* Riverside (electoral district), in the Yukon
* Riverside, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Alberta
* Riverside, Manitoba, a former rural m ...
and
La Jolla, Placentia, exist today.
The Orange County
Citrus Strike of 1936, which protested poor working conditions and pay, included citrus workers from Atwood. In response to the strike, attacks on the participating ''barrios'' were launched, sometimes using tear gas, after the sheriff issued a "shoot to kill" order against the strikers, "implicitly giving license to vigilante activity". White women intentionally broke the strike by going to the orchards to pick oranges as the workers were striking, while white college students from
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
came to "staff the roadside barricades" against the strikers.
The
Santa Ana River
The Santa Ana River is the largest river entirely within Southern California in the United States. It rises in the San Bernardino Mountains and flows for most of its length through San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, before cutting through ...
flood of 1938 inundated Atwood after the water rose 5 feet in five minutes, following five days of heavy rain, reportedly "destroying everything but the La Jolla School Building and three brick structures". The flood left 3,700 refugees, 1,500 homes uninhabitable and "caused more than 50 deaths, most from the Atwood area". This catastrophe led to the construction of the
Prado Dam
Prado Dam is an earth-fill dry dam across the Santa Ana River at the Chino Hills near Corona, California in Riverside County with the resulting impounded water creating Prado Flood Control Basin reservoir. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built ...
upstream near
Corona
Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to:
* Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star
* Corona (beer), a Mexican beer
* Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...
from 1938 to 1941.
In 1977,
Chicano
Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...
artist and teacher Manuel Hernandez-Trujillo created an unnamed
mural
A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Word mural in art
The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...
in Atwood along a 260-foot-long wall above a river channel in ''Parque de Los Ninos''. As reported by Lou Ponsi, the mural portrays "
Mayan
Mayan most commonly refers to:
* Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America
* Mayan languages, language family spoken ...
gods,
Aztec
The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...
eagles, orange groves, serpents, field workers, an image of the sun and a crossed rifle and sword – a representation of the
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
". After it was "mistakenly whitewashed by county workers" in 2019, a restoration project was undertaken by Joshua Correa, Xochitl Zuniga, daughter of Hernandez-Trujillo, and Joe Parra.
The police shooting of Caesar Ray Cruz in 2009, a resident of Atwood and "a married father of five who at the time of death was heading home to take his boys to football practice," along with the other police shootings of predominantly Latino men, culminated in
widespread protests in 2012 in Anaheim, California.
References
External links
City of Placentia website
Placentia, California
Neighborhoods in Orange County, California
Populated places on the Santa Ana River
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