Fullerton, and OC more broadly, have a rich history of a special kind of business: cooperatives.
Cooperatives, also called worker’s cooperatives, are businesses where, instead of being owned by investors or a single owner or even family, are owned by their very own employees, and operations are managed democratically from the ground up.

All things considered, it’s not a common business model, especially not in the United States anymore. That wasn’t always the case, though.

In the Gilded Age—from roughly 1870 to 1900—workers’ cooperatives weren’t as uncommon, especially in the agricultural sector. This was in response to big businesses dominating the industry at the time. In order to lessen the burdens of competition with these trusts, farmers banded together to form agricultural cooperatives. Workers, too, formed cooperatives so that they could control their own workplaces and prevent the exploitation that they would face otherwise in factories owned by the ultra-rich of their time.

During this time period, Orange County was experiencing a significant turning point. A crossroads—in some ways quite literally—between industry and agriculture, since it was dominated both by packing houses and early centers of manufacturing and also large swaths of farmland, especially orange groves.

According to the Orange County Historical Society, as many as half of the packing houses were at one point owned by cooperative associations. One such association would grow to become Sunkist, which to this day remains the largest agricultural cooperative. They also famously license out their brand to Keurig Dr Pepper, the two of whom cooperatively produce Sunkist Soda.

It is difficult to identify former packing houses today; it is even harder to identify who owned them. However, the historical prevalence of cooperatives leaves little doubt that they have had a lasting impact on Fullerton’s history. After all, Fullerton was central to the railway system that transported OC’s (quite literal) fruits across the country, making us the largest sellers of citrus in the nation. A feat aided massively by cooperative associations, from growers to packers. It is no exaggeration to say they made OC, and Fullerton by extension, what they are today.