Blackstone West

Blackstone West is a single street. All 39 of its addresses sit on North Newhall Terrace, running along a ridge across 19.8 acres at the western end of the Tonner Hills. The city's parcel layer records 51 parcels inside the boundary, 50 of them residential, on lots running to a median of 0.258 acres. The structures on them run to a median of 4,713 square feet with five bedrooms, the largest typical house of any of the 43 communities the City of Brea maps.

The general plan divides the ground between 10.7 acres of Low Density Residential and 8.8 acres of Natural Open Space, so nearly half the community is open hillside rather than lots. All 19.8 acres fall in the Very High fire hazard severity class and the landslide layer covers 6.6 of them. Blackstone West is in Brea Olinda Unified and unusually close to its high school: Brea Olinda High is 0.35 miles away with 1,676 students, Falcon Academy of Science and Technology 0.49 miles with 544, and Brea Junior High 1.01 miles with 921.

Blackstone West is the far western end of the Blackstone hilltop, and it is the largest housing in it. Thirty-nine homes went up in 2011, the typical one measuring about 4,713 square feet on lots averaging a quarter of an acre, which is roughly twice the house and twice the lot of the main community below. Nearly half the acreage was left as open hillside rather than built on.

Everything about the setting follows from the oil field. All 19.8 acres fall inside the state's Very High fire hazard class, the city's landslide layer touches about a third of it, and the only vehicle route the city's street layer records inside the boundary is a fire road. Next door, the Blackstone street names run through California's oil towns, from Coalinga and McKittrick to Signal Hill and Pico Canyon, and Aera Court carries the name of the Shell and ExxonMobil venture that held these ridges.