Site History

Historic map of Bolsa Chica from 1873.

Historically, thousands of acres of highly productive saltwater and freshwater marshes extended from Anaheim Bay to the Huntington Beach bluffs. This area included Bolsa Chica, which was part of an extensive tidal marsh, including a mosaic of vegetated salt and brackish marsh, with associated tidal embayments, sloughs, and mudflats.

In the nineteenth century and up through the early 1890's the site was used for cattle ranching and agriculture. In 1899, wealthy businessmen from the area formed the Bolsa Chica Gun Club. To manage the water within Bolsa Chica, a network of dikes was created to prevent tidal exchange and form a series of ponds.

In the 1920's oil was discovered in the area and much of the site has been developed and managed for oil extraction activities ever since.

Historic map of Bolsa Chica from 1910.

During World War II, some of the gun club buildings were used as barracks and gun batteries built as part of the Coastal Protection System to protect the coastline and oil resources from Japanese attack. The weapons were only ever fired for training exercises. Remains of the Panama-style gun mounts can still be seen at the site today on a hill overlooking the wetlands.

Subsequently, the site has been continually altered by filling, ongoing oil extraction, flood control facilities, and surface and subsurface modifications to the area's hydrology. The area surrounding Bolsa Chica was also developed for a variety of uses, including extensive residential and commercial development. Bolsa Chica still contains a fraction of the historical marsh system, but its wetland and aquatic functions have been greatly degraded from those that existed historically.

In the early 1970's, the remaining wetlands at Bolsa Chica were proposed for large-scale residential and commercial developments, but these efforts over the next two decades were not successful due to diligent opposition by many groups including the Amigos de Bolsa Chica.

Bolsa Chica Gun Club.

In 1997, under a State- Federal interagency agreement, most of the remaining lowland portions of Bolsa Chica were purchased by the State of California using mitigation funds from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for the purpose of wetland restoration. Because of permanent losses of adjacent wetlands and aquatic areas, permanent hydrologic modification, and urbanization surrounding Bolsa Chica over the last century, complete restoration of wetland and aquatic functions to historical levels is not possible. However, through many years of planning and evaluation, a restoration plan was developed and implemented to rehabilitate or recreate nearly 600 acres of marine and wetland habitat.

To learn more about the early history of Bolsa Chica and to see a detailed timeline of events visit the Amigos de Bolsa Chica Web Site.
Link to http://www.amigosdebolsachica.org/history.htm