Overview
About Casa Bonita
Casa Bonita covers 74.1 acres and the county records 234 parcels and 231 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 6,554 square feet. Thirteen named streets run 2.97 miles within it, among them Willits St, Camile Pl, Shelley St, Townsend St and a run of tree names in Chestnut Ave, Myrtle St, Pine St and Walnut St.
The zoning layer gives 22.4 acres to single family residence, 9 acres to light industrial and 3.4 acres to multiple family residence, with 15.7 acres carried as open space land. Friendship Park is the one city facility inside the boundary, a pocket site of 0.1 acres with a picnic area, a playground and a trail head rest stop. Santa Ana Unified covers all of the boundary, with Monte Vista Elementary 0.14 miles away.
View available homes in Casa BonitaHistory
How Casa Bonita was built
Casa Bonita is Spanish for pretty house, and the name suits a west side neighborhood of small single story houses on streets named for trees, Walnut, Chestnut, Myrtle and Pine, with Daisy Avenue running across them. Three houses inside the boundary are carried on the City of Santa Ana's register of historic properties, and all three stand on South Franklin Street. The register lists them under family names: the De La Riva House at 219, which the city ranks as a Key property, the Reyes House at 211 and the Mendoza House at 405. They are a plain record of who built a life on this side of town.
The land was part of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, granted to Jose Antonio Yorba in 1810, and it stayed in crops through the town's first decades. A scattering of houses here date from the 1900s and 1920s, but the neighborhood you walk through now is a 1950s build. Santa Ana went from roughly 45,500 residents in 1950 to more than 100,000 in 1960, and the west side turned from farm rows into blocks of houses in the space of a few years.
By the Numbers
Casa Bonita by the numbers
Lifestyle
The Casa Bonita lifestyle
Schools
Schools serving Casa Bonita
Santa Ana Unified covers the whole boundary and assigns campuses through its own address locator rather than a published boundary map. No campus sits inside the boundary; the campuses below are the nearest in the district, with enrollment from the 2024-25 federal count. Monte Vista Elementary is the nearest of them at 0.14 miles.
KG-05 · 348 students
KG-05 · 468 students
09-12 · 283 students
KG-05 · 429 students
KG-05 · 394 students
KG-08 · 827 students
KG-05 · 457 students
KG-05 · 367 students
06-08 · 886 students
FAQs
Common questions about Casa Bonita
How big is Casa Bonita?
The City of Santa Ana draws it at 74.1 acres, with 234 parcels and 231 site addresses on the county record. Thirteen named streets run 2.97 miles inside the boundary.
Where does the street pattern come from?
From Plaza Rancho, surveyed by S. H. Finley in 1902 and divided into twelve lots of about ten acres each either side of Willits Street. Sixty percent of the present boundary lies inside that map.
Who was Jacob Willits?
He is the owner named in the Plaza Rancho certificate, which records that the map was made at his request and that it correctly represented his land. The street the map created still carries his name.
When were the homes in Casa Bonita built?
The county carries a year built on 217 parcels here. The middle of them is 1955, with 140 dated to the 1950s and 24 to the 1920s, and the range runs from 1907 to 1982.
What is inside the boundary for recreation?
Friendship Park, which the city records as a pocket park of 0.1 acres with a picnic area, a playground and a trail head rest stop. It is the only city facility the park and open space layers place inside Casa Bonita.