Anaheim Shores

Anaheim Shores covers 54.7 acres in west Anaheim, and the city's water bodies layer draws a 2.4-acre lake wholly inside it. Every named street takes its name from the sea or from a ship: Admiral, Bayshore, Binnacle, Boatswain, Bowsprit, Compass, Coronet, Ebbtide, Falmouth, Fathom, Lantern, Leeward, Leeway, Lighthouse, Mariner, Outrigger, Shoal, Surf, Voyager and Windward, twenty-two named streets over 2.1 miles. The city records 382 addresses on 362 parcels, all detached single family, with a median lot of 4,200 square feet.

The general plan designates 52.8 acres Residential Low Medium at up to 18 homes to the acre, and zoning is Multiple-Family Residential at a floor of 2,400 square feet of lot area per unit, the district Anaheim uses for compact detached housing. Fifteen parcels carry a pool. The whole boundary lies in ZIP 92801 and in the 0.2 percent annual chance flood zone. Anaheim Shores sits in Anaheim Elementary and Anaheim Union High School Districts, feeding Marshall Elementary, Brookhurst Junior High and Savanna High.

Anaheim Shores began building homes in 1977 and its lake opened in 1978, over eighty acres of ground with a six acre recreation and lake area at the middle of it, still looked after by the Anaheim Shores Community Owners Association. Almost every street is a piece of ship or shoreline vocabulary: Admiral, Bayshore, Binnacle, Boatswain, Bowsprit, Compass, Ebbtide, Fathom, Lantern, Leeward, Lighthouse, Mariner, Outrigger, Shoal, Surf and Voyager. The houses inside the boundary date from 1976 through the mid 1990s, most of them around 1981.

The best thing on the property is the bridge. Mito, in Japan, has been Anaheim's sister city since 1976, and a Japanese style Friendship Moon Bridge was built over Anaheim Shores Lake in 1977 and dedicated the following year. Mito sent koi for the water. At the fortieth anniversary ceremony in November 2017 the chair of Anaheim's Sister City Commission released two more koi into the lake to replenish the originals, and students from Mito have been coming to see the bridge since the late 1970s. Anaheim still hosts an annual student exchange from Mito, which the city calls the Plum Blossom Capital, seventy miles north of Tokyo.