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is a city in northern Orange County, California. The population was 46,488 at the 2000 census. The 2004 population estimate for Placentia is 49,949. This includes the community of Atwood, which is included in the city of Placentia, and is located in its southernmost quadrants.
Placentia has encountered fiscal difficulties due to its limited tax base and mismanagement of OnTrac, a failed rail realignment project in its Old Town district. As of January 2007, the city was about $30 million in debt, forcing a reduction of city services.
In 1837, the Mexican Governor in charge of what is now Southern California granted a grand swath of land to Juan Ontiveros called the Rancho San Juan Cajón de Santa Ana, comprising the modern cities of Anaheim, Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia and Yorba Linda.
The first English-speaking pioneer to the area, Daniel Kraemer, arrived in 1865. He acquired 3,900 acres (16 km²) of the Rancho. In 1868, William McFadden and Sarah Ann McFadden purchased an additional 100 acres (400,000 m²). Within a few years, enough settlers had been attracted to the area to form the Cajon School District. In 1878, at the suggestion of Sarah Jane McFadden, the name was changed to the Placentia School District, derived from a Spanish word meaning "pleasant place to live." The name was soon applied to the whole town.
Farmer Albert Sumner Bradford was instrumental to Placentia's success. Responsible for laying out the city streets, he convinced the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to re-route a track through Placentia on its way to Los Angeles. He also owned a water company which supplied irrigation to the area's farms. The railroad station, combined with the city’s growing agricultural industry (citrus, walnuts, avocados and grapes), put Placentia on the map. By 1926, there were 500 residents and they voted for incorporation.
Placentia's population swelled with postwar suburbanization. In 1960 its population numbered around 5,000, but swelled to 25,000 in the following decade.
By the 1990s, Placentia's downtown had become somewhat run-down in comparison to those of its neighbors; city officials pinned much of the blame on the railroad tracks that had once brought the town so much prosperity, but were now largely occupied by trains barrelling through town on their way to the Midwest from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Inspired by the Alameda Corridor project in southern Los Angeles, Placentia created a project, OnTrac, that called for the tracks to be rerouted through a concrete-lined ditch approximately ten feet below grade level, reducing noise and increasing safety via the elimination of grade crossings. However, fiscal mismanagement and the withdrawal of promised federal funds resulted instead in the project nearly bankrupting the city, which was forced to cancel the OnTrac program in 2006 and curtail services drastically.
The city has moved instead to build over/underpasses at 4 major road/rail crossings in an effort to ease traffic. The new plans will cost an estimated $170 million as compared to the $650 million originally needed to sink the railroad tracks.