Costa Mesa Historical Society

About Costa Mesa Historical Society

The Costa Mesa Historical Society Museum preserves five thousand years of local history through artifacts, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and audio-visual recordings. Visitors explore permanent exhibits including the Costa Mesa Timeline, which spans from 2500 BC through the present day. Early periods displays feature cogged stones, arrowheads, grindstones, and baskets from native Indian settlements, alongside information about the Diego Sepulveda Adobe and connections to Mission San Juan Capistrano. The Early Communities exhibit covers the farming period from the 1880s through 1920s, while the Costa Mesa Homestead section showcases vintage household furnishings, farm tools, and implements. Additional exhibits document Newport Boulevard's evolution from the 1920s to 2003, and the Santa Ana Army Air Base operations from 1942 to 1946, displaying cadet training materials, uniforms, and Women's Army Corps memorabilia. The Diego Sepulveda Adobe, one of Orange County's oldest buildings, stands in Estancia Park overlooking the Santa Ana River bed and offers visitors a connection to centuries of regional history. The museum is located in Costa Mesa, California.