Highlights in the collection are predominantly buildings around Santa Ana. Included are churches, banks, and retail buildings primarily from the later 1950s to the early 1970s.

Orange County is home to the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam.  The pictures in this collection highlight the various ways in which the Vietnamese population has impacted the landscape of Orange County and Santa Ana and the wonderful cultural contributions they have made to the county.

Mr. Charles Swanner was an attorney and local author who collected pictures of Santa Ana depicting years of its birth in hte 1870s through the 1940s. Highlights in these collections are the various street scenes of Santa Ana in its formative years.

4th Street in Santa Ana is at present day a cultural hub for the city's Latino population. Depicted in this collection are images of various businesses, theatres, restaurants as well as people who frequent this area and their activities.

The Baker photo studio was one of the more popular studios in Santa Ana. The photos in this collection are primarily portraits, however there are also various pictures of groups, weddings, and funerals in Santa Ana. Most of the pictures were taken between the mid 1940s through the mid 1950s.

Images represented in this collection were gathered under the aegis of a Depression Era Federal Government Project overseen by the Works Progress Aministration. The photos in this collection reflect the "development of bare land into communities" in Orange County during 1930s.