Verde San Juan Estates

Verde San Juan Estates covers 34.8 acres and the county holds only twelve parcels inside it, the fewest of the fifty communities on the city's homeowner association register, with fourteen addresses on the city record. The parcel median is 2.679 acres, the seventh largest on the register, and the whole boundary is zoned Residential and Agricultural District, where horsekeeping is a permitted use, with the General Plan carrying all 34.8 acres as Very Low Density. The address layer names Hilltop Way, Toyon Drive and Ortega Highway, and all 0.46 miles of interior street appear on the city's Private Roads layer. The register records the association as resident managed.

Two thirds of a mile of city trail runs inside the boundary, the eighth most of the fifty. 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 34.8 acres of the boundary sit in the High fire hazard severity class.

Capo Ranches Inc. recorded Tract No. 9030 on December 1, 1977, dividing nearly thirty-five acres into just twelve lots on Hilltop Way and Toyon Drive off Ortega Highway. Large-lot maps fill slowly and unevenly, and this one did: the county parcel record dates one parcel inside the boundary to the 1980s and three to the 1990s, and the earliest year built the city's parcel layer carries here is 1980. Toyon is the California holly that turns red on these hillsides in December.

The address is a road first proposed in 1903 that two counties had to join forces to build. Construction of Ortega Highway ran from 1929 to 1933, and the dedication was held in August 1933 at Jameson Point above Lake Elsinore. Father St John O'Sullivan of the mission chose the name, honoring Don Jose Francisco Ortega of the Portola expedition, who with Father Lasuen had made the first attempt to found the mission here. Mail was not delivered along the highway until April 12, 1961, seven days before San Juan Capistrano became a city.