ORANGE COUNTY ALMANAC : Men With a Mission
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San Clemente was founded in 1928 by Ole Hanson, an oil and land promoter and ex-mayor of Seattle.
Hanson teamed up with H.H. Cotton of Los Angeles to build a “Spanish mission by the sea.” But they couldn’t make the mortgage payments and lost the property. Years later, President Richard Nixon bought it for his Western White House.
Source: “The Orange County Experience” by Louis Reichman and Gary Cardinale
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