1,001 down; 66 historical sites to go

SANTA ANA — Orange County Treasurer John Moorlach has spent nearly three decades pursuing a goal, and it’s just now come within reach: to visit and photograph every one of California’s 1,067 historic sites.

A Costa Mesa resident and Orange County Supervisor-elect, Moorlach is beyond an enthusiast when it comes to California history. It might not be a stretch to call him obsessed.

On a family vacation this month, he hit 24 state historic sites, bringing his total to 1,001. While state officials count the total as 1,043, Moorlach said some are groups of sites that bear one number, and he counts them separately.

If you ask him to see photos, you’d better have some time on your hands. He’s got six red binders that are each easily four inches thick, and they’re filled with photos, booklets and maps from his travels across the state.

“It’s sort of like a scavenger hunt,” Moorlach said. “There’s sort of a fun component to it.”

He photographed his first state landmark in Inyo County in August 1978 on a church backpacking trip. The site was No. 229, the home of Mary Austin, who wrote about the Indians of the Mojave Desert and also about the Owens Valley.

Since then, he got married and had three children, who can be seen growing from one photo album to the next.

“It’s sort of become like a family album of the kids at different times in their lives,” he said. “You also get to see all my wife’s different hairstyles.”

The sites encompass a wide variety: historic figures’ homes, battlefields, gold mining sites, a Japanese internment camp.

Some sites are hard to find because there’s nothing left of them — for example, the state grants historic status but it doesn’t buy the commemorative plaques, so if no one else foots the bill, a plaque is never put up.

And other sites have their own horror stories. When Moorlach took his family to Camp Cady, a military training site in Barstow, their minivan sank in the sand.

“It’s a hundred degrees, we’re looking for wood, trying to back it [the van] up, there were ants — and no cellphone reception,” he said. “We called AAA, and it took them forever to find us.”

One of the most memorable trips to Moorlach was the visit to Hula Ville, a collection of poems and statues near Hesperia built by folk artist Miles Mahan, a retired carnival worker.

It was 1990 and Moorlach was driving with friends who planned to go backpacking. They complained about stopping at such a weird place, he said, but “It’s the only one I’ve ever been to where the guy was actually still alive.”

In fact, he met Mahan, who gave Moorlach a book of his poetry and even autographed it.

Moorlach likens the historical sites and their meaning in the grand scheme of the state’s history to a needlepoint design.

“When you look at the underside of needlepoint work, it’s really a mess,” he said. “But when you flip it over you see what it really is. You understand the importance of John Sutter; You appreciate the significance of Junipero Serra.”

Not content to keep his quest personal, Moorlach may share his enthusiasm with all of California. He said he’s considered applying for historic landmark status for the county administration buildings as the site of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

And once he’s done with California, he might branch out to other states. But right now, he joked, “When my wife sees me buy the landmark book for Nevada and Wyoming, she freaks out.”

HISTORY IN THE BACKYARD

Of the 25 state historic landmarks in Orange County, five are in Newport-Mesa. Here they are, with their official numbers from the state Office of Historic Preservation.