Overview
About The Hills / The Cove
The Hills and The Cove cover 203 acres on the rise above Pacific Coast Highway, 975 homes on 36 streets and 7.69 miles of pavement, nearly all of the streets named for the coast: Avalon, Balboa, Beachcomber, Catalina, Coastline, Crystal Cove, Emerald Cove and Island View among them. The city's Land Use Element describes the Marina Hill area here as subdivided in the 1950s into 5,000 square foot lots and developed with 970 single family dwelling units; the county assessor's typical parcel inside the boundary today is 5,452 square feet, and 131.6 acres carry the RLD-9 zone. All 203 acres sit inside the California Coastal Zone.
J. H. McGaugh Elementary stands inside the boundary at 1698 Bolsa Avenue, enrolling 721 students, and the city publishes basketball courts, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, tennis courts and a reservable area on the campus, counted in the Open Space Element as 4.7 acres of gym, pool and park. Gum Grove Nature Park, 14.9 acres holding a dense grove of more than 800 eucalyptus trees, lies in the same planning area on the Hellman Ranch land to the north. The area is Council District 3, and the county's school district layer places all of it in Los Alamitos Unified, which runs Oak and McAuliffe middle schools at 998 and 1,018 and Los Alamitos High at 2,915.
View available homes in The Hills / The CoveHistory
How The Hills / The Cove was built
The Hill, as everyone here still calls it, was built between 1952 and 1957 on the I. W. Hellman Ranch, and it is what turned Seal Beach from a beach village into a town. The city held barely a thousand residents from 1915 until the Navy arrived in 1944, and the population went past seven thousand in 1954 as the Marina Hill houses sold. The banker Isaias W. Hellman had bought this land in 1886 and ran it first as a cattle feeding operation and then, after the Navy took the flat ground in 1942, as barley, alfalfa and lima beans.
The street names split neatly into two moods. The older Hill streets are the resort coast of California read off a map: Avalon, Balboa, Catalina, Carmel, Laguna, Riviera and Marvista. The Cove streets that came later are gemstones, one after another, Beryl Cove, Crystal Cove, Emerald Cove, Jade Cove, Marble Cove and Opal Cove, with Coral, Fathom, Driftwood, Ebb Tide, Sandpiper and Silver Shoals filling the gaps. It is nearly a thousand homes on two hundred acres, laid out on the only real rise in the city.
By the Numbers
The Hills / The Cove by the numbers
Lifestyle
The The Hills / The Cove lifestyle
J. H. McGaugh Elementary School stands inside the boundary at 1698 Bolsa Avenue. The city's Open Space Element carries the McGaugh gym, pool and park at 4.7 acres, and the city's facility page lists basketball courts, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a reservable area and tennis courts on the campus.
Gum Grove Nature Park sits in the same planning area at 14.9 acres, and the city records a dense grove of over 800 eucalyptus trees in it.
Schools
Schools serving The Hills / The Cove
The county's published school district layer places The Hills / The Cove entirely inside Los Alamitos Unified. The campuses below are that district's schools with enrollment from the federal count. Which campus a given address attends is set by the district's attendance boundaries, and the district does not publish those as a map, so confirm the assignment with the district before relying on it.
9-12 · 2,915 students
6-8 · 1,018 students
6-8 · 998 students
K-5 · 721 students
K-5 · 642 students
K-5 · 640 students
K-5 · 625 students
K-5 · 603 students
K-5 · 540 students
FAQs
Common questions about The Hills / The Cove
How big is The Hills / The Cove and how many homes are in it?
Measured against the boundary the Orange County Fire Authority draws for it, the area covers 203.2 acres. The city's address layer records 975 addresses inside it and the parcel layer 977 parcels, with 7.69 miles of street across 36 named streets. The Fire Authority draws the area across four evacuation zones carrying one name, and those four dissolve to the single shape measured here.
What kind of homes are here?
The city's Land Use Element describes the Marina Hill area as subdivided in the 1950s into 5,000 square foot lots and developed with 970 single family dwelling units, with custom homes built later on lots left undeveloped at subdivision. The county assessor's typical parcel inside the boundary is 5,452 square feet, and the city zones 131.6 acres RLD-9.
When was it built?
Three tract maps over the hill, tracts 1817, 2590 and 2591, were recorded in 1955, and the Land Use Element records the area as subdivided in the 1950s. The city's Housing Element records the population of Seal Beach passing 7,000 in 1954 with the development of the Marina Hill subdivision. Lots left undeveloped at subdivision were built out with custom homes over roughly the following fifteen years.
Which schools serve The Hills / The Cove?
J. H. McGaugh Elementary sits inside the boundary at 1698 Bolsa Avenue and enrolled 721 students on the 2024-25 federal count. The county's school district layer places the whole of the area in Los Alamitos Unified, which also runs Oak and McAuliffe middle schools at 998 and 1,018 and Los Alamitos High at 2,915. The district publishes no attendance boundary map, so confirm the campus for a specific address with the district.
What open space is nearby?
The city's Open Space Element lists Gum Grove Nature Park at 14.9 acres in the same planning area, recording it as containing a dense grove of over 800 eucalyptus trees, and the McGaugh gym, pool and park at 4.7 acres. The city publishes basketball courts, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, tennis courts and a reservable area at the McGaugh campus. The Hellman Ranch Specific Plan to the north sets aside five Conservation Planning Areas covering saltwater and freshwater marsh wetlands, Gum Grove Nature Park and the Los Alamitos Retarding Basin.