newport beach history

When the 1953 National Boy Scout Jamboree came to town, the event created an insta-city of 50,000 Scouts and their leaders in the rolling hills of what's now Newport Center/Fashion Island, Big Canyon and Eastbluff. Guest interview: Don Webb, former Newport Beach council member and mayor who attended the Jamboree as a 14-year-old Scout.

In 1954, Dora Hill, housewife and grandmother, reluctantly entered the Newport Beach City Council race just 10 minutes before the filing deadline and unexpectedly won in a landslide. Garnering the most votes in city history, the victory surprised even her husband, who only agreed to her run for office because he was convinced she would lose.

At her first council meeting, she was appointed the city's first female mayor. For the next four years, Mayor Hill would led a reformation of Newport Beach from a town run by a powerful good, old boys' network that traded heavily in cronyism to a transparent and professional city government that continues to this day.

Mayor Hill's second greatest achievement was figuring how to stop 35,000 kids from their annual spring-break invasion (called Bal Week) of Newport Beach, a town at the time of just 17,000 residents.

She did all this while battling the relentless chauvinism that came with being the city's first woman mayor.

Special feature: This episode incorporates a rare recording of Mayor Hill that allows her to tell much of her story in her own words. 

Joe Beek is known as the Father of Balboa Island and operator of the Balboa Island ferry for a half century (his family still runs it after more than 100 years). But he was so much more than that. Here's just some of his feats: 

• He was Newport's first harbor master; he marked the bay's channels, built the channel-marker buoys himself, and, in 1923, climbed jetty rocks to place warning lights at the harbor entrance .
• He served on the city library's first Board of Trustees.
• He served in World War II at the age of 61 after forging his birth certificate.
• He founded Newport's Tournament of Lights Boat Parade in 1921, a summer event so popular that the city's police chief asked him to shut it down in 1949 because visitors were overwhelming the city.
• He was the developer of some of Newport's signature housing communities.
• He served a record 49 years as the secretary of the California Senate, receiving bipartisan support for nearly a half century.

The story of his life is truly legendary. 

Frank and Fran Robinson, an unassuming couple who moved to Newport Beach in 1962, learned about the already-approved plans to turn the Upper Newport Bay—also known as the Back Back—into a massive development of extended shorelines, homes, a marina, businesses, and a waterskiing and rowing venue. Even though the dredging had already begun, the Robinsons decided to take on the Irvine Company, one of the largest land developers in the country, to preserve for the public one of California largest estuaries. After a decade-long battle, David slayed Goliath and saved the Back Bay. Guest: Cassandra Radcliff, author of "Saving Upper Newport Bay: How Frank and Frances Robinson Fought to Preserve One of California's Last Estuaries."
 

On the morning of May 23, 1896, a 38-year-old man known as Fisherman Pete was found dead on the floor of his 10x12 shanty, about a 100 yards south of McFadden Wharf (now the Newport Pier). The right side of his head had been crushed, 40 gashes and cuts marked his body, and a number of his fingers had been chopped off. 

It was Newport Beach’s first murder. It also was the grisliest homicide ever in Newport Beach and maybe all of Orange County. But remarkably, historic crime had been lost to time. Until now. 

A five-question, multiple-choice pop quiz on Newport Beach history. Here are the questions (no Googling before listening): 

• What eyesore did the  City Council nearly approve in 1956 that would have been just off the coast of Newport? 
• What year were Corona del Mar's parking issues first brought to City Hall?
• Who was Bob Henry, the namesake of the park on the Castaways bluff?
• What amazing find did workers uncovered on the banks of the Back Bay during the construction of the Newporter Inn (now the Hyatt Regency)?
• What was Newport Center/Fashion Island's working name during its planning?