The base was responsible for continued population growth in Santa Ana and the rest of Orange County, as many veterans moved to the area to raise families after the end of the war. Some highways cross Santa Ana and connect it to other areas of Orange County, the greater Los Angeles area, and beyond.
Santa Ana
, approximately four-fifths Latino, has been characterized by The New York Times as the face of a new California, a state where Latinos have more influence in everyday electoral, cultural and demographic life than almost anywhere else in the country. Having been a constituent city since November 11, 1952, the citizens of Santa Ana amended the charter in November 1988 to provide for the direct election of the mayor, who until then had been appointed from among the members of the council.The table below shows how the percentage of people without insurance in Santa Ana, CA, changed over time compared to the percentage of people enrolled in various types of health insurance. The Santa Ana Highway (Interstate) heads north to Los Angeles and south to South Orange County and San Diego. The Santa Ana Unified School District includes 37 K-5 elementary schools, nine middle schools 6-8, eight high schools 9-12, five special schools, and one charter school. The core of the city is the downtown area, which contains both stores and housing, as well as the Santa Ana Civic Center, which is a dense campus of administrative buildings for both the city and Orange County.
Greenville, a former rural area of Santa Ana, has buildings that are more than a century old, but industrial complexes have replaced the agricultural fields that once surrounded the city. This visualization illustrates the percentage of students who graduate with an Associate Degree from Santa Ana, CA schools according to their specialty. After the expedition of Gaspar de Portolá in 1769 from Mexico City, then capital of New Spain, Fr. Junípero Serra called the Vallejo area of Santa Ana (Santa Ana Valley or Santa Ana Valley).
Like most minority-majority cities in the United States, Santa Ana is a stronghold of the Democratic Party. One of Santa Ana's most notable businesses is the musical instrument company Rickenbacker, whose electric guitars and basses became famous in the hands of many rock and roll legends. The origins of Santa Ana began in 1810, when the Spanish governor of California granted the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana to José Antonio Yorba. The following charts show, first, property values in Santa Ana, California, compared to the geographies of parents and neighbors and, second, owner-occupied housing units distributed among a number of property value groups compared to the national averages of each group.
In recent years, the nearby city of Irvine has surpassed Santa Ana in commercial growth, with the Irvine Business District located near John Wayne Airport.
