Fullerton Apartment Reviews

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Fullerton Information

One of Stearns' first customers was Domingo Bastanchury, a Basque shepherd who purchased the majority of the rancho land in what is now northern Fullerton for his own sheep ranch. St. Jude Medical Center sits on land once part of the Bastanchury Ranch.

With the advent of the 1880s, Southern California was the scene of a "land boom" sparked by the area's growing prosperity and the promotional campaigns of the railroads. It is at this point that George and Edward Amerige join the Fullerton story.

The Ameriges were grain merchants in Malden, Mass., when, in 1886, they sold their business and headed west to investigate the land boom for themselves. Arriving first in San Francisco, they worked their way south, purchasing a fruit ranch in Sierra Madre.

On a duck hunting vacation to the Westminster marshes near Anaheim in early 1887, the Ameriges overheard the "locals" talking about the hot news of the day - that the California Central Railroad, a subsidiary of Santa Fe, was looking for land. George H. Fullerton, president of the Pacific Land and Improvement Co., also a Santa Fe subsidiary, had been sent west specifically to purchase land for railroad right-of-way.

George H. Fullerton, Railroad agent for whom the city was named (Photo courtesy of the Fullerton Public Library) The Ameriges learned that a likely site for a town was located north of Anaheim. The brothers were so convinced of the potential of the area that they sold their Sierra Madre holdings and opened a real estate office in Anaheim. They then began negotiating for the land, arranging to buy 430 acres at a cost of approximately $68,000.

Discussions next began with Pacific Land and Improvement, with the Ameriges offering free right-of-way and half interest in the land if the railroad survey were altered to include the proposed townsite. With George Fullerton's assurance that the area would be included, the Ameriges purchased the 430 acres. On July 5, 1887, Edward Amerige drove a stake into a mustard field at what is now the corner of Harbor Boulevard and Commonwealth Avenue, and the townsite of Fullerton was born.