Dana Point Headlands

The Headlands occupies 124 acres on the promontory between the harbor and Strands Beach, and it carries fewer addresses per acre than any community here apart from the harbor: 193 addresses on 13 named streets, 28 of them on Strand Beach Dr and 28 on Dana Strand Rd. The parcel record classes 158 lots single family, on a median lot of 11,668 square feet with a typical home of 7,738 square feet and 5 bedrooms, the largest typical home of any community in this guide. A private pool is flagged on 70 of the 165 lots.

113.1 of those acres fall under the Headlands Conservation and Development Plan on the city's specific plan layer, and the city maps 4 parks totaling 51.5 acres inside the boundary, among them the 29.42-acre CNLM Dana Point Reserve, Hill Top Park at 11.78 acres and Harbor Point Park at 9.33. Three named city trails run inside it, Hilltop Park Trail at 0.67 miles, Nature Interpretive Center Trail at 0.61 miles and Harbor Point Park Trail at 0.15 miles. Dana Strands Beach adjoins the boundary, and Capistrano Unified feeds Richard Henry Dana Elementary for elementary, Marco Forster Middle for middle and Dana Hills High for high.

This is the promontory that gave the town its name. Richard Henry Dana thought the bluffs and coves here the most beautiful stretch on the California coast when he came ashore in 1835 for hides, and after his death in 1882 the point was named for him. Some of the ground was inside the 1,388 acres the Dana Point Syndicate bought in 1926, and the beach facing land stayed in Chandler family hands for decades afterwards.

What sat on it for most of the twentieth century was not an estate but the Dana Strand Beach and Tennis Club, a mobile home community that closed in the late 1980s. For years after that the only way down to Strands Beach was a dirt trail running through the ground where the trailers had stood. The headlands were one of the last large coastal properties left for development in Orange County, and the argument over what to do with them ran for about ten years. The original plan called for a large multistory hotel on the bluff top and hundreds of houses and apartments. What survived the California Coastal Commission was just over 100 home sites, plus a promise to turn the bluff into a nature preserve and to spend more than eleven million dollars on public access, which is why there are now stairs, restrooms, a beachfront walkway and a funicular carrying people down the cliff to Strands Beach. Lots went on sale in the autumn of 2006.