Huntington Beach Happenings
by: Chris MacDonald
Published: April 13, 2026
HUNTINGTON BEACH...This is a link to my article on Ricky Blake being selected as The 58th Annual Sunset Beach Art Festival Poster/T Shirt Design.
Huntington Beach Assistant City Clerk Juan Esquivel shared a link to the action agenda of the previous Huntington Beach City Council Meeting on Tuesday April 7th, 2026.
Huntington Beach City Historian Jerry Person presents Remember When - Let's Remember Attorney James Hansen
When an ordinary individual gets into trouble he consults an attorney, but who does an attorney see when he has a problem? Why a doctor of course. This may seem odd to you, but it was just natural for one attorney to do just that, as we shall see.
It seems these days you can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about someone suing someone or some business. These days so many attorneys specialize in one particular category of law and this week we are going way back to a time when the downtown had but two attorneys and to the life of one of these.
In 1920 with the oil boom just beginning and our beach town had only one attorney, Lew Blodget, but all this changed the next year with the arrival of James Hansen and it is his life we will be remembering this week.
It was on a cold and windy day in Chicago that James L. Hansen was born on November 4, 1885 and it was there that Hansen spent his youth attending the local elementary and high school in Chicago. After he graduated high school Hansen went to the University of Chicago where he would further his education in law.
Hansen left Chicago to take up residency in Portland, Oregon, and it was there that Hansen succeeded in graduating from the Portland Law School and in a short time was appointed to the bar in Oregon. After a short time in practice in that state, Hansen moved to California to live and practice.
He lived for several years in the San Joaquin county area of our golden state and during his time in San Joaquin he become a familiar sight to the people there. Many of his close friends knew him not as James but as “Pat,” a nickname he acquired.
It was also during this time that Hansen fell in love with the automobile and one day he purchased a Scripps-Booth motorcar and with it traveled the picturesque backcountry of our state. He would always refer to this automobile by the initials only, “S.B.”
While in the San Joaquin area, the 34-year old Hansen met Ida England and in October of 1919 the two were wed.
About a year later he and Ida boarded a train for Los Angeles and from there would ride the Pacific Electric’s red car to Huntington Beach in search of a home and an office to practice law. With the oil boom going full blast there was not a single vacant house or office space available anywhere here in Huntington Beach.
The Hansens had to settle for Anaheim and it was there that Hansen mentioned his trouble in finding a place in Huntington Beach to his family doctor. His doctor’s advice was to take a six-month rest and after the months had passed, Hansen decided to take the first vacant house or office that came on the market in our town.
He got tired of waiting for something to open up and had an apartment complex on Lake Street built that he called the Hansen Apartments, this was located between Orange Avenue and Pecan Avenue. The apartments rented so fast that Hansen had a second building built, the Hansen Court, in the same block.He and Ida took one of the 22 apartments to live in and in the mean time a vacant office became available at 306 Walnut Avenue.
On his first day at the office he moved his large law library in along with his big easy chair, he also hung his sign in front that read “James L. Hansen, Attorney-at-Law.” He had a phone installed in his office with the telephone number of 1871.
The next morning he arrived at the office and found seven clients waiting out in front. It seems that the other attorney in town had too much work to take on any new clients at the time.
Hansen joined our chamber of commerce and the Orange County Shrine Club and he became a member of our Lions Club and because he could play the violin, they put him in the Lions Club orchestra.
From that second day and for years to come, Hansen had no problems finding clients and Huntington Beach now had its second attorney, thanks to Hansen taking his family doctor’s advice.