Overview
About Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands
The Cameo Community Association covers 91.6 acres at the ocean end of Corona del Mar and holds two named subdivisions rather than one. Cameo Shores sits on the seaward side and Cameo Highlands above it, and the city draws both under a single association with 319 addresses on 331 parcels. Its 19 streets carry New England names, among them Cortland Drive, Dorchester Road, Roxbury Road, Milford Drive, Orrington Road, Perham Road, Gorham Drive, Brighton Road and Hampden Road, with Cameo Shores Road and Cameo Highlands Drive naming the two halves.
Zoning is R-1-6000 across 89.8 acres, single unit residential with a 6,000 square foot minimum lot, and the median parcel measures 0.255 acres. All but a tenth of an acre sits inside the Coastal Zone, and 3 acres of the bluff face fall in FEMA flood zone VE, the wave hazard band. The city marks a Corona del Mar entry monument on East Coast Highway west of Pelican Point inside the footprint, and OCTA stops the bus on Coast Highway at both Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands. Harbor View Elementary serves the boundary and enrolled 344 students on the 2024-25 federal count. For the city's own administration the city places it in evacuation zone 46, park service area 10, census tract 626.43.
View available homes in Cameo Shores and Cameo HighlandsHistory
How Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands was built
Cameo Shores was begun in 1959 and Cameo Highlands followed in 1960, the Irvine Company working with the Sunny Homes Corporation. It was first called Cameo Cliffs and renamed shortly after it started. The early lots were sold as completely unimproved ground on a lease rather than in fee, and the layout was the point: instead of the thirty foot lots of the 1904 village, this was drawn with wide frontages and terraced so that each row steps down toward the water and the view belongs to the whole neighborhood rather than just to the front row. The county dates 314 assessed houses inside the boundary, with a median year of 1961, so most of it was standing within two years of the start.
The street names read like a map of New England. Dorchester, Brighton and Tremont are Boston, and Cortland, Milford, Orrington, Perham, Gorham, Camden and Fairfield keep the pattern running, with Cameo Shores Road and Cameo Highlands Drive naming the two halves. The neighborhood runs along the bluff to the edge of Crystal Cove State Park, and the coast here is rockier than the sand at Big Corona, broken into pocket coves that residents reach by deeded access rather than by public stair.
By the Numbers
Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands by the numbers
Lifestyle
The Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands lifestyle
Schools
Schools serving Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands
The Newport-Mesa Unified locator was queried at 67 real addresses inside this boundary and returned Harbor View Elementary at every one of them. That campus teaches kindergarten through sixth grade at 900 Goldenrod Avenue and enrolled 344 students on the 2024-25 federal count. The secondary grades are taught at 2101 Eastbluff Drive, which the district names as both Corona del Mar Middle School and Corona del Mar High School and which the federal directory records as one campus of 2,106 students across grades 7 to 12.
7-12 · 2,106 students
K-6 · 344 students
FAQs
Common questions about Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands
Are Cameo Shores and Cameo Highlands one association or two?
One. The City of Newport Beach draws a single Cameo Community Association over 91.6 acres, and the two names come from the two recorded tracts inside it, Tract 3357 in 1958 and Tract 3519 in 1960.
Who built them?
The Irvine Company recorded Cameo Shores alone. Cameo Highlands was recorded by The Irvine Company together with Macco Corporation, Harrington Development, Dorchester Development and Sunny-Homes Incorporated, all named on the certificate. The register draws the association as seventeen lot polygons covering 91.6 acres. Closing the street rights of way between them gives a footprint of 124.6 acres, which is the shape drawn on the district map.
Is any of this ground in a flood zone?
Yes. The FEMA layer the city publishes places 3 acres of the bluff face in zone VE, the coastal wave hazard band, with the other 88.7 acres in zone X.
What is the fire hazard rating?
The 2025 state map rates 32.2 of the 91.6 acres Very High, 17.1 acres High and 17.9 acres Moderate.
How close is the beach?
Corona del Mar State Beach lies 1,102 feet from the boundary, and the association has 4.76 miles of public street inside its footprint with no private roads recorded. The city bikeway layer runs 0.49 miles inside the footprint, on Coast Hwy E.