Newport Beach in the Rearview Mirror

11: Newport Nuggets: Three Short Stories Lost to History

Hosted by William Lobdell

Newport Beach history is littered with fun, weird, amazing and/or mindboggling stories that are too thin to make into an entire episode, but too good to pass up. In "Newport Nuggets: Three Short Stories Lost to History," we explores a trio of tales from the early part of the 20th Century:

  1.  Newport Beach's first doctor and the Spanish Flu pandemic.

  2. The summer camp on Little Balboa Island for orphans and children whose parents couldn't take care or them. The popular retreat lasted 30 years (1914-1944).

  3. The would-be (and massive) religious colony, Melrose Mesa, planned for the West Newport bluffs near present-day Hoag Hospital.  And why it didn't have a prayer at succeeding.