Brea is a city in northern Orange County, California. Take a look below for 20 fun and awesome facts about Brea, California, United States.

1. The population as of the 2010 census was 39,282. It is 33 miles (53 km) southeast of Los Angeles.

2. Brea is part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

3. The city began as a center of crude oil production, was later propelled by citrus production, and is now an important retail center because of the large Brea Mall and the recently redeveloped Brea Downtown.

4. Brea is also known for its extensive public art program which began in 1975 and continues today with over 140 artworks in the collection placed and located throughout the city.

5. Brea’s public art program has been used as a model and inspiration for many public art programs across the United States.

6. The area was visited on July 29, 1769, by the Spanish Portolá expedition – the first Europeans to see inland parts of Alta California.

7. The party camped in Brea Canyon, near a large native village and a small pool of clean water.

8. A historical marker dedicated to his visit stands in Brea Canyon just north of town.

9. The village of Olinda was founded in present-day Carbon Canyon at the beginning of the 19th century and many entrepreneurs came to the area searching for “black gold” (petroleum).

10. In 1894, the owner of the land, Abel Stearns, sold 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) west of Olinda to the newly created Union Oil Company of California, and by 1898 many nearby hills began sporting wooden oil drilling towers on the newly discovered Brea-Olinda Oil Field. In 1908 the village of Randolph, named for railway engineer Epes Randolph, was founded just south of Brea Canyon for oil workers and their families.

11. Baseball legend Walter Johnson grew up in Olinda at the start of the 20th century where he worked in the surrounding oil fields as a youth.

12. The villages of Olinda and Randolph grew and merged as the economy boomed. On January 19, 1911, the town’s map was filed under the new name of Brea, from the Spanish language word for natural asphalt, also called bitumen, pitch or tar.

13. With a population of 752, Brea was incorporated on February 23, 1917, as the eighth official city of Orange County.

14. As oil production declined, some agricultural development took place, especially lemon and orange groves. In the 1920s, the Brea Chamber of Commerce promoted the city with the slogan “Oil, Oranges, and Opportunity.”

15. In 1950 Brea had a population of 3,208. The citrus groves gave way gradually to industrial parks and residential development. In 1956, Carl N. Karcher opened the first two Carl’s Jr. restaurants in Anaheim, California and Brea, California. The opening of the Orange Freeway (57) and the Brea Mall in the 1970s spurred further residential growth, including large planned developments east of the 57 Freeway in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

16. In the late 1990s, a 50-acre (200,000 m2) swath of downtown Brea centered on Brea Boulevard and Birch Street was heavily redeveloped into a shopping and entertainment area with movie theaters, sidewalk cafes, a live comedy club from The Improv chain, numerous shops and restaurants, and a weekly farmer’s market. It is locally known and signed as Downtown Brea.

17. Sunset magazine named Brea one of the five best suburbs to live in the Western United States in early 2006.

18. Brea is governed by a council-manager system. The five member city council is elected for four-year terms in elections every two years to fill alternately two and three seats.

19. The council is made up of the mayor, the mayor pro tem and three councilmembers. The council elects a mayor from the serving councilmembers to serve a one-year term as mayor. The city council hires a city manager to direct the city’s departments and advise the council. The council appoints members of the Planning Commission; Parks, Recreation and Human Services Commission; Cultural Arts Commission, and Traffic Committee.

20. Fire protection for Brea is provided by the Brea Fire Department (BFD) and law enforcement is provided by the Brea Police Department. Within Carbon Canyon, in the Olinda neighborhood of Brea, is situated Olinda Landfill, a major waste management facility serving a large part of Orange County.