Anaheim audiotours

Anaheim started life in 1857 as a German wine colony planted by fifty families from Bavaria, who named their settlement for the Santa Ana River and spent two decades turning the flats of Orange County into California's largest wine-producing region. A blight wiped out the vineyards in 1884, and the city reinvented itself around citrus, walnuts, and sugar beets until a man named Walt Disney broke ground on 160 acres of orange groves in 1954 and changed everything.

Beyond the resort district, the old Anaheim Colony still holds its ornamental streets named after friends of the German founders, including Helena Street, honoring the actress Helena Modjeska.

The Anaheim Packing House, once a citrus-packing facility built in 1919, now anchors a food hall where you can trace the city's agricultural roots through the flavors on offer. Downtown's Carnegie Library and the Victorian-era St. Michael's Episcopal Church offer quieter monuments to the town before the Matterhorn.