Highlands

Highlands covers 357.6 acres on the ridge above Serrano Avenue, the second largest community in this section, with 7.1 miles of street and forty named roads from Big Canyon and Canyon Rim to Sunset Ridge, Windy Ridge and The Highlands itself. The city records 960 addresses on 864 parcels, 835 of them detached single family and 29 held as association or common ground, with a median lot of 7,000 square feet. Two hundred and eleven acres are zoned under the Highlands at Anaheim Hills Specific Plan.

A hundred acres of the boundary carry the Parks designation and 42 more Open Space, and two city parks sit inside it: Canyon Rim Park, 4.9 acres, wholly within, and Deer Canyon Park, of whose 133.5 acres two thirds fall here. A further 10.6 acres are designated School. Two hundred and six of the 864 parcels carry a pool. The boundary lies wholly in ZIP 92808 and in flood zone X, and Highlands sits in Orange Unified School District, feeding Canyon High.

The Highlands was built out over a long stretch, from the early 1980s into the 2000s, with 1994 the median year across its 960 addresses. It is one of the largest boundaries in Anaheim Hills at close to 358 acres, and a big share of that is not houses at all. Deer Canyon Park Preserve, 103 acres of hiking and riding trail, lies largely inside it, and Canyon Rim Park adds ball fields and courts.

The streets are the oddity and the best thing about the place. Alongside the expected view words, Highcrest, Highridge, Moonridge, Rainview, Mountvale and Windy Ridge, there is a long run of first names: Brianna, Colin, Dylan, Emanuele, Kelsey, Leemarie, Margaret, Matthew, Miles, Natalie, Nicole and Patrick. Somebody in the 1980s named a dozen streets after people rather than after scenery, and a resident who grew up on Kelsey or Natalie is living on a first name that meant something to whoever drew the map.