Valley Adams

Valley Adams covers 211.1 acres and the county records 568 parcels and 565 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 6,200 square feet. Twenty three named streets run 5.97 miles within it, among them Laura Linda Ln, Griset Pl, Maddock St, Manitoba Dr, Maywood Ave, Pendleton Ave, Pomona St and Occidental St.

The zoning layer gives 82.7 acres to open space land and 65.9 acres to single family residence, with 11.3 acres of two family residence, and the general plan carries 83.1 acres as low density residential against 77.1 acres as institutional. That institutional share is the schools: four campuses sit inside the boundary on the city school layer, John Adams Elementary, Carl Harvey Elementary, Gerald P. Carr Intermediate and Valley High, which is more campuses than all but the two largest neighborhoods carry. Adams Park adds 5.7 acres with a ball diamond, a basketball court, a picnic area, a concession stand and a playground.

The houses came in one hard push in the 1950s. Of the roughly 565 addresses inside the boundary, about 370 date to that decade and another 130 to the 1960s, which matches the city as a whole going from 45,533 people in 1950 to 100,350 in 1960. Valley High was built in 1959, right at the crest of it, which is why the neighborhood and the school share a name and an age.

Carr Intermediate carries the best story on these blocks. It opened as Ralph C. Smedley Junior High, for the man who founded Toastmasters International at the Santa Ana YMCA, and in 1974 it was renamed for Gerald P. Carr, who was raised in Santa Ana, graduated from Santa Ana High School in 1950 and commanded Skylab 4, the last crewed mission to the Skylab station, from November 1973 to February 1974. The school teams are still called the Astros. The streets meanwhile run in two clear sets, a row of colleges in Harvard, Stanford, Occidental and Pomona, and a row of saints in Saint Andrew, Saint Anne and Saint Gertrude.