Overview
About Capistrano Beach
Capistrano Beach covers 724 acres, 17.5 percent of Dana Point, and carries 3,096 addresses on 84 named streets. Camino Capistrano runs the length of it with 282 addresses and Beach Rd carries 213 along the sand. The parcel record classes 1,730 lots single family and 588 multiple family, on a median lot of 6,047 square feet with a typical home of 2,046 square feet and 3 bedrooms, and the county flags a private pool on 230 of the 2,422 lots.
Three beaches meet the boundary on the city's beach layer: Capistrano Beach County Park, Doheny State Beach and Poche County Beach. Inside it the city maps 6 parks over 10.0 acres, 5.6 miles of bikeway and 1,685 planted street trees, of which 275 are Canary Island Date Palm. 8 of the city's 63 homeowner associations sit inside, led by Capistrano Beach Community Association (215 addresses), Dana Bluffs (105 addresses) and Old Mill Pond (58 addresses). Capistrano Unified serves the community and feeds Palisades Elementary for elementary, Shorecliffs Middle for middle and San Juan Hills High and San Clemente High for high.
History
How Capistrano Beach was built
The town was sold as a resort. Advertisements ran from 1925 under the heading Birth of a City, promising oiled and surfaced streets, a motor transit from Los Angeles in two hours and fifteen minutes, a promenade along three miles of shoreline and a place for seventy thousand people. Houses went up on the bluff, a pier and the Capistrano Beach Club went up on the sand, and in January 1929 the Petroleum Securities Company, owned by the oil man Edward L. Doheny, took over as owner and developer. Doheny's son Ned had already formed the Capistrano Beach Company with his wife's twin brothers and the contractor Luther Eldridge, whose Spanish houses had low pitched red tiled rooflines and heavy ceiling beams stenciled by the painter Alex Meston. Eldridge finished the family house on the bluffs, four houses on the beach and eighteen more before it all stopped.
It stopped on 16 February 1929, when Ned Doheny and his secretary Hugh Plunkett were killed in a murder that has never been solved, a week before Edward Doheny was to face trial in the Teapot Dome case. In 1931, as a memorial, the family company gave 41.4 acres to the state, and it became California's first state beach. The pier was wrecked by waves in 1964 and taken out, the beach club was pulled apart in the late 1960s, the county bought the site in 1979 and Capistrano Beach Park opened in 1980. After sixty one years in unincorporated Orange County, Capistrano Beach voted to join Dana Point on 1 January 1989.
By the Numbers
Capistrano Beach by the numbers
Lifestyle
The Capistrano Beach lifestyle
Doheny State Beach covers 62 acres and was California's first state beach, created after Edward L. Doheny gave 41 acres of his beachfront estate to the State before his death in 1935. It took the Doheny name formally in 1963.
The campground holds 113 sites including 33 on the beach, all with fire rings, picnic tables and hot showers, and State Parks estimates a million visitors a year.
The water off the beach lies inside the Dana Point State Marine Conservation Area, where taking marine life is prohibited apart from the recreational take of lobster, sea urchin and finfish by hook and line.
Schools
Schools serving Capistrano Beach
Capistrano Unified serves Capistrano Beach. 12 interior points spread across the boundary were run through the district's own address locator. The boundary straddles more than one attendance area at the high level, so both assignments are shown rather than one.
K-5 · 332 students
6-8 · 634 students
9-12 · 2,641 students
9-12 · 2,740 students
FAQs
Common questions about Capistrano Beach
How big is Capistrano Beach?
Capistrano Beach measures 724 acres on the boundary the City of Dana Point publishes, which is 17.5 percent of the 4,143 acres its eight communities cover between them. Inside it the city records 3,096 addresses and 2,422 parcels.
What are the homes in Capistrano Beach like?
The parcel record classes 1,730 lots single family and 588 multiple family. On the county record the median lot measures 6,047 square feet, the typical home 2,046 square feet of living space and the median bedroom count is 3.
Does Capistrano Beach reach the beach?
On the city's own beach layer Capistrano Beach County Park, Doheny State Beach and Poche County Beach adjoin the boundary, so the sand begins where the community ends.
Which homeowners associations are in Capistrano Beach?
8 of the 63 associations on the city's HOA layer sit inside this boundary: Capistrano Beach Community Association, Dana Bluffs, Old Mill Pond, Marbella Raquet Club, Via Verde, Via Saratoga, Castillo del Mar and Via de Daum.
Which schools serve Capistrano Beach?
Capistrano Unified. Its own address locator, run at 12 interior points inside the boundary, returned Palisades TK-5 at 12 of 12 points for elementary; Shorecliffs MS at 12 of 12 points for middle; San Juan Hills HS at 9 of 12 points and San Clemente HS at 3 of 12 points for high.