Santa Ana (Spanish for ‘Saint Anne’) is a city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city’s population was 310,227 at the 2020 Census, making Santa Ana the 13th-most populous city in California and the 4th densest large city in the United States (behind only New York City, San Francisco, and Boston). Santa Ana is a major regional economic and cultural hub for the Orange Coast.

Santa Ana’s origins began in 1810, when the Spanish governor of California granted Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana to José Antonio Yorba. Following the Mexican War of Independence, the Yorba family rancho was enlarged, becoming one of the largest and most valuable in the region and home to a diverse Californio community. Following the American Conquest of California, the rancho was sold to the Sepúlveda family, who subsequently lost their land claim. In 1869, William H. Spurgeon then purchased the rancho and formally founded the modern city of Santa Ana.

Approximately four-fifths Latino, Santa Ana has been characterized by The New York Times as the “face of a new California, a state where Latinos have more influence in everyday life—electorally, culturally and demographically—than almost anywhere else in the country.”