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Upper Newport Bay Collection
The restoration and preservation of the Upper Newport
Bay as an ecosystem and recreational site is
one of Orange County's greatest environmental
success stories. And not only has the Bay itself
been well preserved, but the history of the struggle
to save it is also well preserved in the UCI
Libraries.
Langson Library has been actively acquiring documents on the Upper Newport Bay and San Diego Creek ecosystem since 1970. Reports, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and other documents cover all aspects of this key waterway and estuary, including water supply, habitat, pollution control, and restoration activities. Sources include the County of Orange, State of California, private consulting firms, and individual citizens. All told, the documents form a significant primary resource for researching Orange County's ever-changing environment.
Activities that are particularly well documented include the proposed
land swap between the Irvine Company and the County in 1965 that was
intended to pave the way for development; the formation of the Friends
of the Newport Bay (FONB, the activist group that worked diligently to
preserve the bay) in 1967; and the papers of J. Frank and Frances Robinson,
founders of FONB, who devoted thirty years of their lives to
environmental activism on behalf of the Bay.
Most of the material is located in either the non-circulating Orange County collection (within the Government Information collections) or in Special Collections and Archives. Keyword searches of ANTPAC using the phrases "upper newport bay" and "san diego creek" retrieve a total of more than 150 records.
For more information contact Yvonne Wilson, Orange County Documents Librarian (ymwilson@uci.edu or x47362) or Bill Landis, Manuscripts Librarian (blandis@uci.edu or x43113).