High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Valencia Orange is an orange first created by the Californian agronomist William Wolfskill, on his farm in Santa Ana. Its name comes from the Spanish city of Valencia, widely known for its excellent orange trees. The orange was later sold to the Irvine Company, who would dedicate nearly half of their land to its cultivation. The success of this crop in Southern California likely led to the naming of Orange County. The Irvine Company's Valencia operation later split from the company and became Sunkist. Cultivation of the Valencia in Orange County had all but ceased by the mid-1990s due to rising property costs, which drove most of what remained of the Southern California juice orange industry into Florida.