Ocean Hills

Ocean Hills covers 32.6 acres and holds 270 addresses on 296 parcels, at a median parcel of 0.048 acres. At 8.3 addresses to the acre it is the second densest of the fifty San Clemente communities mapped here, and by area it is the 43rd. All thirteen of its streets begin with Calle, led by Calle Casino with 56 addresses, then Calle La Quinta and Calle Pluma with 36 each.

Residential Medium Low Density land accounts for 25.2 acres inside the boundary and public right of way for 7.2. All 32.6 acres sit in the state's High fire hazard severity class. The school feed is what sets Ocean Hills apart: Capistrano Unified's own locator returned San Juan Hills High at all five interior points tested, and it is the only one of the fifty communities mapped here that the district sends to that campus rather than to San Clemente High. Shorecliffs Middle and Palisades Elementary complete the assignment.

Ocean Hills sits on the east side of Interstate 5 at the Camino De Los Mares exit, and its houses went up between 1972 and 1975, compact and stacked close on the slope. The association keeps pools and a sport court alongside them, and the shopping center with the Ralphs and the Trader Joe's is near enough that people here walk to it.

Before any of it, this corner was rancho. Rancho Boca de la Playa was a 6,607 acre grant made in 1846 that ran from San Juan Creek south into what is now San Clemente, and its name points at the wetland estuary at the mouth of the beach. The north end stayed the far side of town for a long while after that. Interstate 5 was not finished through San Clemente until 1960, when it replaced El Camino Real as the road everyone drove, and the interchange at Camino De Los Mares is what turned this edge of the city into a place with a grocery and a neighborhood within walking distance of each other.