A group of women who took the ranch’s Americanization classes. Morales is the cute toddler at the bottom left.
The Lost Mexicans of the Bastanchury Ranch
80 years ago, officials deported hundreds of Fullerton residents—and Orange County has tried to forget ever since
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO Thursday, Apr 11 2013
Decades later, long after federal authorities deported the last of her students, Arletta Kelly still remembered the cactus.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Kelly had worked as an Americanization teacher in the citrus camps of Orange County, tasked with schooling Mexican immigrants in the art of good citizenship. During the day, she taught women how to sew and cook American meals like casseroles and pies; at night, the Michigan native recited basic English phrases before audiences of men so that they could use them at work. She bounced across the colonias (worker colonies) of North County, from La Habra to Placentia, Anaheim to Fullerton. But Kelly eventually spent most of her time with the Mexicans of the Bastanchury Ranch, 6,000 rolling acres of what now constitutes the exclusive neighborhoods of northwest Fullerton—Sunny Hills, Valencia Mesa and others—and parts of Brea and La Habra, an area that to this day, with its winding roads, visible horse stables, dramatic valleys and stretches of untouched California landscape, feels rustic, beautiful and foreboding. Continue reading
