Los Corrales

Los Corrales covers 68.79 acres, the twelfth largest boundary on the city's homeowner association register, and the city's address layer records 187 addresses inside it across thirteen named streets, from Camino La Ronda and San Juan Creek Road through Paseo Corrales, Paseo Establo, Via Montura and Via Rueda. None of the 1.84 miles of street inside the boundary appears on the city's Private Roads layer, because the recorded maps dedicated all of them to the public. Zoning runs 49.7 acres of Single-Family-10,000, 16.9 acres of Single-Family-20,000 and smaller shares of Single-Family-7,000 and Planned Community, and the General Plan splits the ground between 35.3 acres of Low Density, 10.1 acres of Medium Density, 5.8 acres of Very Low Density and 4.2 acres of Medium Low.

The boundary takes in 0.61 miles of city trail with four trailheads on it, the head and the terminus of the Corales View Trail and the heads of the South Corales and Barking Dog trails, and 0.43 acres of La Ronda Park, at La Ronda and Paseo Establo, sits inside it. Four interior points were tested against the Capistrano Unified locator and all four returned Harold Ambuehl Elementary for TK through fifth grade with 324 students, Marco Forster Middle at 930, and San Juan Hills High School at 2,641, which graduated 96.2 percent of its class. The fire layer places 60.3 acres in the High class, 5.0 acres in Moderate and 3.5 acres in Non-Wildland Fuel.

Los Corrales means the corrals, and its streets include Paseo Corrales, Paseo Establo, the stable, and Via Montura, the saddle. The homes were built from 1978 and the naming is not invented nostalgia. San Juan Capistrano became a center of California rancho culture after the mission was founded in 1776, and cattle, vaqueros and open grazing shaped both the economy and the character of the place for the next hundred years.

The town has been unusually stubborn about keeping it. While the rest of Orange County urbanized, San Juan Capistrano held on to equestrian zoning, an extensive network of public riding trails and open space, and horses are still part of ordinary life here rather than a memory. A subdivision that opens onto a trail and calls its streets after corrals and stables is a product of that policy as much as of a marketing meeting.