Before Mischa Barton and Lo Bosworth, there was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Orange County was originally founded as a port region, while its name boasts about the plentiful farming opportunities, which was intended to promote immigration to the area. But the beautiful seaside towns soon became popular among celebrities during the early days of Hollywood, making it the ideal location for stars to settle in for weekend retreats.

“Orange County was conveniently close to Hollywood but not so convenient that the headaches of Hollywood followed the stars down here,” Chris Jepsen, President of the Orange County Historic Society, tells GRAZIA USA. “They could relax on their patio or go for ice cream with their kids without having flashbulbs go off in their face.”

For younger audiences, Orange County entered the pop culture chat in the early aughts with the debut of the hit show The O.C. The cast included newcomers Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson, Adam Brody and Ben Mackenzie — who made headlines and gained fame for their antics both on and off screen. Fans of Arrested Development may recall the quirky Bluth family owned a frozen banana stand on Balboa Island in Newport Beach.

Next came popular reality shows like The Hills and Laguna Beach which created stars like Kristin Cavallari, Lo Bosworth and Lauren Conrad, as well as the original season of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County. A Selling Sunset spinoff, Selling the OC, focused on the well-heeled clients of the O.C. while Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles star Josh Altman set up a new office in Newport Beach.

But long before these shows made their mark on Orange County, major movie stars like Humphrey Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall, as well as Frank Sinatra (aka “Chairman of the Board”), child star Shirley Temple and country-western legend John Wayne called Orange County home. In fact, Wayne was such a prominent resident of the area — he lived in Newport Beach from 1966 until the time of his death in the late ‘70s — that the regional airport in Santa Ana is named after him.

“Stars like Harpo Marx would come to Santa Ana to quietly get married,” Jepsen says. “John Wayne could yell at a bad driver and not have it appear in the national news the next day. And up until the big real estate boom of the 1950s and 1960s, Orange County was also more rural than Los Angeles. Depending on where you spent your time in Orange County, there was an element of “getting away from the hustle and bustle” and driving out amongst the orange groves, along Laguna’s rugged shore, or though rustic canyons.”