Stoneridge Estates

Stoneridge Estates covers 151.98 acres, the fifth largest of the fifty communities on the city's homeowner association register, and the address layer records 180 addresses inside it, one for each numbered lot on the recorded map, across nine named streets: Highland Drive, Highview Circle, Hillside Terrace, Horseshoe Bend, Saddleridge Drive, Silver Creek Drive, Valley Rim Circle, Vantage Circle and Viewpoint Circle. None of the 2.41 miles of street inside the boundary appears on the city's Private Roads layer, because the recorded map offered every one of them to the public. Zoning runs 88.1 acres of Single-Family-20,000, 34.2 acres of Single-Family-10,000 and 29.5 acres of General Open Space, and the General Plan splits the ground between 58.7 acres of Very Low Density, 48.3 acres of Low Density and 27.1 acres of General Open Space.

The boundary takes in 1.46 miles of city trail, the third most of the fifty, with the head and the terminus of the Rancho Line Trail and the terminus of the Stoneridge Trail inside it, and the Mission Hills Reservoir sits on 1.32 acres of city land within it. Four interior points were tested against the Capistrano Unified locator and all four returned the same three campuses: 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. All 151.9 acres of the boundary sit in the High fire hazard severity class and the city's 200 foot ridgeline buffer crosses 6.53 acres.

Stoneridge runs along the high ground on the north-east side of town, first built in 1980, with houses ranging from about 2,425 square feet to 8,240. The streets say what the developers thought they were selling: Horseshoe Bend, Saddleridge Drive, Silver Creek Drive, Hillside Terrace.

The ridge itself was part of the Forster country. Don Juan bought the ruined mission with James McKinley at public auction in 1845 for 710 dollars, put together more than 200,000 acres out of the mission lands, Rancho Trabuco, Rancho La Paz and Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores, and after his death in 1882 the ranch went to James Flood, whose manager Richard O'Neill Sr became half owner. When land like this finally came forward for houses it came in large pieces, which is why the lots up here are as big as they are.