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José Antonio Yorba (1746-1825), known also as Don José Antonio Yorba I, was one of the important early settlers of Spanish California (then known as Alta California). Born in San Sadurni de Noya in the Spanish province of Catalonia, Spain, Yorba first came to the New World as an officer in the Gaspar de Portolà Expedition of 1769. For his service, Yorba was awarded with an enormous land grant from the Spanish Empire in 1801 that comprised a significant portion of today's Orange County in Southern California. Covering some 62,512 acres, Yorba's great rancho included the lands where the cities of Olive, Orange, Villa Park, Santa Ana, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach stand today.

Among José Antonio's many children, Don Bernardo Yorba I (1801-1858) would rise the farthest, accumulating ever larger territories for the family's massive cattle herds. Don Bernardo introduced irrigation agriculture into California near his seat, the Rancho San Antonio, which was amongst the largest of early California, reporting the number of its rooms as being in the hundreds. After the Mexican-American war, American rule was established in California in 1848, the Yorba lands were amongst the very few to be preserved intact, due to marriages and grants to Anglo-American immigrants, and it has been supposed for this reason that the Yorba family was particularly close to the American cause.

Yorba's daughter Ramona married Benjamin Davis Wilson, an Anglo settler from Tennessee who was seeking passage to the Orient via California and ended up staying in Southern California. Wilson purchased Rancho Jurupa from José Antonio which would become the community of Riverside.

Throughout this American migration period, descendents of the Yorbas continued to marry into other prominent Spanish families, including the famous Grijalva, Perralta, and Dominquez's, who also married and granted lands to Americans to attempt preservation of their lands and heritage. Many of today's recognizable anglo names in the Orange County area, including the Kraemers and Irvine's, married into these Spanish families. In the early twentieth century, Samuel Kraemer, who had married the last of the "grand" Yorbas, Angelina Yorba, tore down the historic Rancho San Antonio after the city of Yorba Linda refused to accept it as a donation. Today, the legacy of the Yorba Family can still be appreciated at the historic Yorba Cemetery, established in 1858 at Woodgate Park.

See also Californios.