DOWNTOWN Garden Grove was hit hard by the ’33 quake. Some merchants moved their goods outside (Garden Grove Historical Society),

Editor’s note: This year is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Garden Grove in 1874. This is the third in a series on key events in the city’s history.

It was the afternoon of March 10, 1933 that Garden Grove’s world came tumbling down, quite literally.
The so-called Long Beach Earthquake – believed to actually originate offshore near Huntington Beach – rumbled across Los Angeles and Orange counties toppling buildings, killing and injuring people and rendering many homeless.

The earthquake struck Garden Grove hard. Still a town (about 5,000 people) and not a city, it was an agricultural community best known at the time for growing and packing oranges.

Many business buildings were constructed of unreinforced masonry; many homes were wooden structures not bolted to a concrete foundation. The result was that much of the community’s central business district – clustered around what is now Main Street and Garden Grove Boulevard – was damaged. Some structures were leveled; some hit so badly they were unusable.

But the worst impact was at Garden Grove Union High School, a short distance away on Stanford Avenue. The main classroom building, a two-story structure built in 1923, suffered severe damage and one student, Elizabeth Pollard, was fatally injured.

Worried about after shocks, some downtown merchants moved their goods into the roadway and people slept on their lawns. There were no fires, but the danger of looting inspired members of the local American Legion to stand guard, there being no police in town then.

However, the community recovered. The high school building was rebuilt as a one-story structure on the foundation of the original edifice.  The downtown area was rebuilt, the street widened and the architectural theme of white storefronts and red tile roofs introduced, some of which can be seen today.