Westside

Westside is 18.6 acres on the far western edge of Fullerton and names all five of its streets for the American frontier: Cheyenne Way, Chisolm Way, Cochise Way, Colt Way and Sutter Way. The record holds 270 addresses on seven parcels, 252 of them numbered as units, with 0.82 miles of private street. The city zones 17.85 acres R-3 Limited Density Multiple Family Residential under a Greenbelt Concept general plan designation.

The terrain is the reason for that greenbelt line: 18.5 of the 18.6 acres fall in the Very High fire hazard severity class, the liquefaction zone covers 15.3 acres and the landslide zone 0.7. The schools nearest belong to Buena Park's districts, with Charles G. Emery Elementary 0.74 miles out at 646 students and Gordon H. Beatty Middle 0.87 miles at 641, and Sunny Hills High 1.86 miles at 2,337.

Westside is at the far western edge of Fullerton, hard against the Buena Park line and next door to Ralph B. Clark Regional Park. The condominiums date from 1983, one and two bedroom plans of roughly 644 to 1,016 square feet, and there are 252 of them on eighteen acres. The street names go west in a different sense: Cheyenne, Chisolm, Cochise, Colt and Sutter, a frontier theme in a city whose other neighborhoods were choosing Spanish and English names.

The park next door is the real story. It opened in 1981 as Los Coyotes Regional Park and was renamed in 1987 for Ralph B. Clark, the retiring Orange County supervisor, who lived from 1917 to 2009. It sits at the southern edge of the West Coyote Hills and it is one of the best fossil sites in the county. The interpretive center there holds a nine million year old baleen whale skeleton pulled out of a local construction site, reported to be one of the only complete Miocene whale fossils anywhere, along with ice age mammal exhibits and a mural of the animals that walked these hills.