Cyprus Cove

Cyprus Cove covers 53 acres and holds 214 addresses on 218 parcels, at a median parcel of 0.175 acres. Eleven streets serve it and the naming runs two ways at once, five toward horses and five toward the water: Calle Potro, Calle Potranca, Calle Del Establo, Via Rancho and Calle Campesino on one side, Avenida Vista Del Oceano, Vista Azul, Vista Blanca, Calle Tiburon and Calle De Las Focas on the other. Avenida Vista Del Oceano carries 41 addresses, more than any other street here.

Residential Low Density land accounts for 41.3 acres inside the boundary and public right of way for 10.4, and 3.2 acres of the line fall inside coastal bluff the city maps. The state fire hazard severity map reaches only 35.2 of the 53 acres, 18.2 Moderate and 17 High. Addresses inside the boundary carry the 92672 zip code. Capistrano Unified's own school locator returned San Clemente High, Shorecliffs Middle and Concordia Elementary at all five interior points tested.

Cyprus Cove sits behind a guarded gate it shares with Cyprus Shore at the southern edge of San Clemente, near enough to the county line that the two are always talked about together. Its tract map was recorded in 1979 and the original houses date from the years after, with rebuilds and heavy remodels filling in since, and the association keeps a clubhouse and a private way down to the beach. The street names give away what the ground used to be. Potranca is a filly, Potro a colt, Del Establo the stable, Campesino a farm worker and Via Rancho needs no translation, while Calle de las Focas and Calle Tiburon, the seals and the shark, come from the water at the bottom of the hill. Horses and stock on one half of the map, sea animals on the other, which is this corner of the county in two words.

The sand it reaches is the top of Trestles, named for the wooden railroad trestle bridge that surfers still walk under to get to the water. That structure was replaced with a concrete viaduct in 2012. For most of the twentieth century those waves were effectively closed, sitting behind the Marine Corps boundary. That changed in 1971, when Governor Ronald Reagan established San Onofre State Beach on land leased from the Marine Corps, a short walk south of La Casa Pacifica, where the president was then living.