Yorba Linda began on land granted in 1834 to Bernardo Yorba as the 13,328 acre Rancho Cañon de Santa Ana by Mexican governor Jose Figueroa. The Yorba family retained most of the land after the Mexican-American War in 1848, and in 1907 Jacob Stern bought a section for farming and sheep grazing before selling it the next year to the Janss Investment Company, which named the area Yorba Linda and subdivided it by the acre for business, residential, and agricultural uses. In 1910 the first of many lemon and orange groves were planted and the population was less than 50. In 1911 Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company began service and the first school was built. By 1912 the town had its first post office, the Yorba Linda Citrus Association was founded, Southern California Edison began providing electricity, the first church was built, and the original downtown area was linked to Los Angeles by the Pacific Electric Railway. In 1913 former President Richard Nixon was born there, the Chamber of Commerce was formed, the library opened, and avocado trees were first planted. In 1917 Yorba Linda Boulevard became the first paved street. The original downtown, later called Old Town, stood on Main Street and surrounding streets including Lemon Drive, Olinda Street, Arroyo Street, and School Street, where many buildings from 1910 to 1920 still survive, including the first schoolhouse, the Masonic Lodge, and two church buildings. In the decades after its early twentieth-century establishment, Old Town expanded with newer structures from the 1940s, 1950s, and later, remaining both a memory of the past and a living part of the city’s future.