Leaving Orange County

Just an ordinary story ‘bout the way things go

‘Round and around nobody knows. 

But the highway 

goes on forever. 

There ain’t no way

To stop the water. 

                      -Rodney Crowell 

I am a California girl, born and raised, who wakes up every morning in the suburbs of Chicago. We left Fullerton in Orange County two years ago. As of last month, we became homeowners in the village of Morton Grove, one of the over 200 cities and villages that comprise “Chicagoland,” which includes Northwest Indiana for some reason. 

The San Francisco Chronicle coined the term “California Exodus” back in 1989. So the story goes. Interesting to consider that 1989 was the final year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The wealthy class were enjoying heftier portfolios and far lower income tax rates while the working class and what we used to know as the middle class were struggling under lower wages, rising costs of living, and higher inflation. The federal deficit ballooned to over a trillion dollars for the first time. The postwar boom our parents enjoyed had gone bust. The Golden State economy suffered.

1993 saw the highest numbers of Californians in exodus. They settled in Arizona, Nevada, Washington State, and Florida. The US Census reports that COVID saw a renewed surge in domestic migration, period, due to a mass resignation of Americans from the workforce, a reshuffling of the labor market, and a surge in the long-standing trend of outmigration from large urban areas. Domestic migration occurred in every state and is still occurring. For the most part, populations have returned to pre-pandemic levels. 

According to the Allied Van Lines Company 2024 Allied US Migration Report, migration from California is greater than that of any other state, and there is not an equal influx of folks migrating to California from elsewhere.

California-bashing is all the rage. Surely, we can agree on that much. From the White House to conservative news desks to social media comment gutters, California takes a lot of hits. Not to ever be accused of credibility or reason, these sources conveniently and stubbornly overlook the quality of life-indicators in states with a fraction of California’s population. This California Exodus story manages to stay alive somewhere within the toxic news heap—shoved to the top when so needed—and is eyed as some indication that the Golden State is failing. 

Statisticians attribute California’s outmigration phenomenon to partisan politics, cost of living, crime, taxes, pollution, and traffic. And I am not saying the analysts are wrong, but I am a little surprised that the number one destination for former Californians these days is Texas. Then Arizona. This indicates zero worries about the escalating temps and drought, which sets a match to my personal California Exodus theory, wherein climate refugees decamp in search of more water and less heat. I am also surprised to learn that only 10% of those leaving the state are retirees. I imagined a far higher percentage. 

I was born in 1958 and grew up on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, back when a middle-class family could convince a bank to grant them a mortgage loan for that real estate. Our neighborhood was a kid paradise. We were a pint-sized gang who ruled the streets from morning until night while our parents lived in ignorant bliss regarding our activities. Now it is a community of iron gates and towering mansions, celebrities, and game changers. My father was a native Californian, a fashion designer and costumer who worked in the garment district downtown. For some perspective as to his design aesthetic, garments from his seasonal collections were routinely bought by the sexy fashion and lingerie store Frederick’s of Hollywood. My stay-at-home mother was a grounded WWII Women’s Airforce Service Pilot (WASP), who moved as far west as she could go from her St. Petersburg, Florida family, and settled in Los Angeles. My parents experienced some kind of cute-meet and then married, which is something I wish I could ask them about, but they’ve both been gone a long time. I was going to comment that I don’t recall witnessing any great spark between them, but I was the last of five children born in a six-year-span so apparently this wasn’t always the case. 

Two years after I graduated from Hollywood High School my father died, and shortly thereafter I met my husband-to-be, a Florida native. Five years later I was living in St. Petersburg—full circle event—with a toddler and a newborn baby. We had a third baby and relocated to a small Central Florida town where the largest employers were the Disney corporation and the school district. Our locales were determined by my husband’s employers; the best opportunities, the most secure positions. I was never shy about sharing certain negative views of our town, the Confederate flags and “Git ‘er done” bumper stickers, and the Florida climate. All I wanted was to return to Southern California. Sometimes I would mistake a bank of clouds on the horizon for a mountain range, and the yearning was a physical discomfort. 

My Uncle Charles died in 2007 and left me his house in Fullerton. When I was growing up, Orange County really got no respect. Orange groves? Yawn. Worse, the John Birch Society and a host of other idiots symbolically erected the infamous Orange Curtain which turned us off even more. We were too ignorant or lazy to consider the lot of those trapped behind that curtain, the very activists who tore it to shreds. 

We were personally familiar with my uncle's neighborhood in Fullerton because we’d visited him and his “husband” routinely (their marriage was not ordained of God or the county recorder). Fullerton borders on Anaheim which is where the wonder that was Disneyland rose from the hinterlands like an electrified fairyland with themed roller coaster rides. Still, we snubbed our noses at it. All of it. Just because that’s what everyone seemed to be doing. 

After my uncle’s death we moved into his old, neglected post-war tract home and cleaned out the rats and the rotting roof timbers. I loved my neighborhood in the foothills. I could walk out my front door and be running or hiking a wilderness trail in five minutes. I found a job with the Orange County Public Libraries. 

We lived in that Fullerton tract home for 17 years. Both of our daughters would settle in Southern California for a few years but gave up on it. The housing is just as unaffordable as everyone says it is. The event that saw us embark on another one of life’s branching-points happened a year before we retired—our son and his wife in Chicago had a baby girl. We knew what we had to do. We planned our own exodus from my beautiful home state, a decision nudged along by mounting climate anxiety. The California summers had lengthened and heated up, the fire season no longer had a beginning or end. We shied off our long-term goal of retiring to the Eastern Sierras due to the annual wildfires in the region. This decision did not come easily and still hasn’t gained any real equilibrium in my heart and mind.

Every California Exodus story is different, and our story is unusual. Had we not inherited property in Fullerton, we never would have been able to make it back to Southern California to begin with. Our adult offspring work hard and pay their taxes—so the struggling billionaires won’t have to—and they cannot even consider owning real estate in California, which is roughly double that of most everywhere else. 

Life here on the midwestern plains is an adjustment, but we’ve adapted to the fact that we don’t ever wake up in the dead of night worrying that the water might run out. We can just lie awake in a swirl of anxiety about all the national and global problems everyone else loses sleep over. The Great Lakes region has a high climate change resiliency rating. The winters are growing shorter, and warmer. Lake Michigan provides fresh water without the threat of flooding. I still practice water conservation in my daily habits which is probably good because I just learned that the Great Lakes are imperiled by thirsty AI data centers. Our Illinois governor may be a billionaire but he’s one of us, and we don’t have to see vainglorious Trump banners and a host of bastardized American flags on every block, modified to show support of Christian Nationalism, law enforcement, or whatever the badge of outraged honor happens to be. Still, leaving Orange County wounded me. The longer I am away, the deeper the cut. California will always be my special place on this wondrous planet. 

The economy and the climate will increasingly propel domestic migration and will spell hardship for millions upon millions of Americans. Social politics do an excellent job of steering our attention away from the obvious. But we know. And we need to tear down orange curtains all everywhere if we are going to make it. 

As for the brouhaha over the California Exodus, California is still the most populated state, with over 86 million homeowners and over 45 million renters. Clearly, the Golden State is quite livable and is not going anywhere. 

Bethia Sheaan-Wallace retired from a long career in library services three years ago. Since then the California native moved to the Midwest where she is a full-time grandma and part-time library volunteer.