The city of Santa Ana is a busy urban area with close ties to the founding of Orange County, being the county seat and still containing major government facilities, such as the Superior Courthouse and the Civic Center. The city of Santa Ana is an ethnically diverse 27 square mile city located 35 miles south of Los Angeles and approximately ten miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. With a total population of more than 335,000, Santa Ana is the second largest city in Orange County and serves as the county seat. The city comprises more than 60 different neighborhoods.
The Santa Ana Unified School District is the local school district that serves the majority of our community. In addition, there are six neighboring school districts serving parts of the city, including the unified school districts of Garden Grove, Tustin, Orange, Irvine, Newport-Mesa and Huntington Beach. 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. Santa Ana is the corporate headquarters of several companies, including Behr Paint, First American Corporation, Greenwood & Hall, Ingram Micro, SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, STEC, TTM Technologies, Kern's and Wahoo Fish Taco.
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 Santa Ana Artist Village was created around the Grand Central Art Center at Cal State Fullerton to attract artists and young professionals to live-work lofts and new businesses. Santa Ana has highly competitive college and high school sports teams that play at the Santa Ana Stadium and at the Santa Ana Unified School District Sports Complex Stadium. The following is a summary of nonfarm labor force data for the Santa Ana-Irvine-Anaheim metropolitan area, 2004 annual averages.
The following is a summary of data for Santa Ana public schools for the 2003-2004 school year. Santa Ana's population increased from around 49,000 people in 1900 to nearly 210,000 residents in 1950. Since the land had been part of the Santiago de Santa Ana ranch and since it was also close to the Santa Ana River, the town was called Santa Ana. Recent major commercial developments in Santa Ana include the Main Place regional mall, the MacArthur Place mixed-use area and the Santa Ana Auto Mall.
Santa Ana is an increasingly important part of the regional and national scene when it comes to food, fashion, technology and cultural trends. The Santa Ana Collaborative for Responsible Development (SACred) initiated much of the activism around SD, including negotiating a Community Benefits Agreement. Amtrak, the national passenger train system, serves Santa Ana several times Monday through Friday with less frequent service on weekends. The Garden Grove Highway (State Route 2) runs near the northern border of Santa Ana and connects Long Beach to the west and the city of Orange to the east.
Located a short distance from Santa Ana, other Orange County colleges include the University of California, Irvine, California State University, Fullerton, and Chapman College, Orange. The Santa Ana-based Orange County Public Library, which operates 32 branches, has more than 2.5 million volumes and 5,000 periodicals, and maintains a special collection of Law Library documents. .
