Monarch Beach

Monarch Beach covers 1,322 acres, 31.9 percent of Dana Point, running from the Laguna Niguel line down Crown Valley Parkway and Selva Road to Salt Creek. It carries 4,949 addresses on 174 named streets, with Crown Valley Pkwy at 561 and Selva Rd at 389. The parcel record classes 2,877 lots single family on a median lot of 6,972 square feet with a typical home of 2,151 square feet, and a private pool is flagged on 717 of the 3,037 lots.

21 of the city's 63 homeowner associations sit inside this boundary. The largest are Niguel Shores Community Association (1,020 addresses), Niguel Beach Terrace (371 addresses), Monarch Bay Terrace (348 addresses), Monarch Hills (325 addresses), Monarch Bay (273 addresses) and Sea Terrace Apartments (210 addresses), and the list also holds Ritz Cove, Cape Cove, Emerald Ridge, the Estates at Monarch Beach and the Villas at Monarch Beach. 222.3 acres fall under the Monarch Beach Resort Specific Plan. Salt Creek County Beach and Dana Strands Beach both adjoin the boundary, the city maps 3 parks over 33.0 acres inside it, and Capistrano Unified feeds Richard Henry Dana Elementary, Moulton Elementary and John Malcom Elementary for elementary, Marco Forster Middle and Niguel Hills Middle for middle and Dana Hills High for high.

All of this was Rancho Niguel, a 13,316 acre grant made in 1842 to Juan Avila and named after a village the Acjachemen called Niguili. Avila sold to John Forster in the drought of 1865, and in 1895 the land came to Lewis Moulton and his French partner Jean Pierre Daguerre, who ran cattle and sheep on it for two generations. In 1954 the Daguerre heirs sold 7,200 acres to an investor group and another 856 acres at the mouth of Salt Creek to George Capron, a former major league baseball player.

The modern place was invented in 1959. Paine Webber Jackson and Curtis and the Boston firm Cabot Cabot and Forbes bought the big parcel, called it Laguna Niguel to borrow Laguna Beach's name while keeping the old native one, and floated the Laguna Niguel Corporation on the Pacific Stock Exchange that April, where six thousand investors put in $8.2 million. Victor Gruen and Associates drew the master plan on the principle that a family should find most of what it needed inside the community. Because the chain of title started with the King of Spain, the streets were given a royalty theme, which is where Crown Valley Parkway, Coronation Drive and Monarch Bay itself come from. The name Monarch Bay was chosen for the butterfly as well, since the sagebrush and manzanita hills here were once a breeding ground for monarchs.