Biography | Raymond Watson — The Campus He Sited on the Irvine Ranch

People treat UC Irvine as a finished campus that arrived with Aldrich Park already planted.

On 4 October 1965 the first 1,589 students walked dusty paths between a handful of buildings. Landscaping had barely begun.

The land under their feet had been cattle range five years earlier.

Raymond Watson joined the Irvine Company in September 1960 as chief planner. The company then held about 93,000 acres, roughly a fifth of Orange County, and was still an agricultural operation deciding what to become.

The University of California needed a ninth campus. The ranch needed a reason to become a town rather than a grid of tracts.

Watson worked the company's side of that bargain with William Pereira, whose concentric campus plan put a park at the center and academic rings around it.

Aldrich Hall, the administration building at the east entrance, still faces that park.

Watson rose through the company as the villages, roads, and shopping centers went in: vice president of planning in 1964, land development in 1966, senior vice president in 1968, executive vice president in 1970.

The City of Irvine incorporated on 28 December 1971.

After William R. Mason died in 1973, the board named Watson president and chief executive. He held the job until 1977, then left to start a Newport Beach development firm.

He came back as vice chairman from 1986 to 2003.

Newport Center and Fashion Island were part of the same ranch plan. So were the residential villages that still structure the city.

The visitor standing at Aldrich Hall is standing inside the diagram Watson spent the 1960s turning into streets.

Photo: Allyunion, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons