Brea, California

Brea (/ˈbreɪə/ BRAY-uh; Spanish for 'tar') is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 47,325. It is 33 miles (53 km) southeast of Los Angeles. Brea is part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The city began as a center of crude oil production and was later propelled by citrus production. It is a significant retail center, including the Carbon Canyon Dam, Carbon Canyon Regional Park, Brea Mall and downtown Brea. The city has an extensive public art program that began in 1975 and has over 140 artworks placed throughout the city.

The area began as part of the homelands of the Tongva, who lived in the area for thousands of years before any contact was made with Europeans. The Tongva established extensive routes for travel and trade between Tongva villages as well as with neighboring Indigenous nations. The closest known village site to the city of Brea today is Hutuknga.

The area was visited on July 29, 1769, by the Spanish Portolá expedition, the first Europeans to see inland parts of Alta California. The party camped in Brea Canyon, near a large native village and a small pool of clean water.

The village of Olinda was founded in present-day Carbon Canyon at the beginning of the 19th century. Many entrepreneurs came to the area searching for "black gold" (petroleum).

The majority of the current city borders of Brea were within the Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana. The cessation of territory to the United States in 1848 ushered in a new era of decline for the ranchos as rigorous title-proving processes enacted in 1851 and drought in 1860 caused most owners to sell their land.

The 1880s saw the development of agriculture in northern Orange County, particularly in the form of Valencia Oranges after it was found that the crop grew better in the cool foothills. Additionally, the construction of the Santa Fe Railroad as well as the discovery of oil in the area created an environment that kept winter frost from damaging the plant. Nearby oil fields provided supply for a process called "smudging", subsequently causing a grimy fog to settle over the area which reportedly caused health issues for the workers.

In 1894, the owner of the land, Abel Stearns, sold 1,200 acres (4.9 km²) west of Olinda to the newly created Union Oil Company of California, and by 1898 many nearby hills began sporting wooden oil drilling towers on the newly discovered Brea-Olinda Oil Field. In 1908 the village of Randolph, named for railway engineer Epes Randolph, was founded just south of Brea Canyon for oil workers and their families. Baseball legend Walter Johnson grew up in Olinda at the start of the 20th century, working in the surrounding oil fields.