Van Buren

Van Buren covers 325.7 acres and holds 1,159 addresses on 1,133 parcels, at a median lot of 0.172 acres. It is the least compact shape in the city, filling 65.1 percent of its own convex hull. Zoning runs 153.4 acres Residential Urban, 55 acres Planned Development, 25 acres Residential Suburban and 12.8 acres of commercial, with 167 parcels in the city's planned development district 6, 49 in district 4, 44 in district 5 and 19 in district 30. Fifty-one named streets carry 10.83 miles of centerline, 33 segments of it private, and the assessor land use code marks 1,121 of the 1,133 parcels a single family residence.

The Richfield oil field boundary covers the entire 325.7 acres and the city flags every one of the 1,159 addresses as sitting over it. Ninety-five wells remain on the state record inside the boundary, 94 of them in Richfield, and twelve of those are recorded active with a further seventeen idle, the largest number of live wells under any zone the city draws. Union Oil Company of California is the operator on 32 and West Energy Operating on thirteen. The flood layer places 13.2 acres in zone A, the state liquefaction layer covers 58.3 acres and the city flags 180 addresses as sitting in a liquefaction zone. The 2025 fire hazard severity layer rates no part of this boundary at any level.

Van Buren Street is named for Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, who served from 1837 to 1841, and the elementary school took its name from the street rather than the other way around: Tract 4128 dedicated the street in October 1961 and the school opened in 1965. Yorba Linda keeps the presidential run going with an Adams, a Jefferson, a Lincoln and a McKinley on its street list, and the ground under all of them was part of Bernardo Yorba's land grant.

Oil never really left this community. Ninety-five wells sit on the state record inside the boundary, 66 plugged, 17 idle and twelve still active, on leases including REDU, and the whole of the community, all 325 acres of it, lies inside the state's Richfield oil field. Richfield Road, which runs along the eastern edge, takes its name from the same field.