San Juan Creek

San Juan Creek covers 40.26 acres and the city's address layer records 120 addresses inside it across eight named streets: Calle Susanna, Camino Sancho, Corte Aurora, Paseo Ranchero, Via Buena Vista, Via Hacienda, Via Leona and Via Limon. All 1.2 miles of street inside the boundary appear on the city's Private Roads layer, and under the recorded map the storm drain easements are private and maintained by the homeowners association as well. The whole boundary is zoned Planned Community District, 40.3 acres of it, and the General Plan carries 34.7 acres as Very Low Density.

Four interior points were tested against the Capistrano Unified locator and all four returned the same three campuses. Harold Ambuehl Elementary takes TK through fifth grade with 324 students at a 23 to 1 ratio, 53 percent meeting the state standard in English language arts and 59 percent in mathematics, and it feeds Marco Forster Middle, which enrolls 930. San Juan Hills High School enrolls 2,641 and graduated 96.2 percent of its class. All 40.2 acres of the boundary sit in the High fire hazard severity class.

The creek this neighborhood is named for is the reason there is a town here at all. San Juan Creek runs 29 miles from the Santa Ana Mountains, where Morrell Canyon Creek meets Bear Canyon Creek at about 1,690 feet, down to the San Juan Lagoon at Doheny State Beach, and it drains a watershed of nearly 134 square miles across Orange and Riverside counties.

The lower three and a half miles are now channelized between levees, which is what made it safe to build houses like these, finished between 1989 and 1994, on the flats beside it. The trail along the bank is part of the riding network the city has kept through the valley, so the creek that fed the mission's fields is now mostly walked and ridden.