Alta Finisterra

Alta Finisterra covers 27.8 acres and records 202 addresses on three parcels, 201 of them carrying a unit designator. Seven named ways serve it, Copante, Coso, Costanero, Denia, Lene, Mesto and Nivelada, running 1.37 miles inside the boundary. The whole 27.5 acres the general plan classifies sits at 6.5 to 14 homes an acre under Residential Planned Development zoning.

The full boundary is in flood zone X. Capistrano Unified serves it, and the district's own address locator returns the same assignment at every interior point tested: Castille Elementary, which enrolled 482 students on the 2024-25 federal count, then Fred Newhart Middle at 1,105 and Capistrano Valley High at 1,991.

Finisterra descends from the Latin finis terrae, land's end, the same root behind Cape Finisterre on the Spanish coast. The Mission Viejo Company built its master plan on Spanish and mission names and forms, stucco walls and barrel tile roofs among them, and Finisterra is one of the names it planted three times across the city: Alta Finisterra, upper Finisterra, Baja Finisterra, lower Finisterra, and Finisterra itself, three separate developments finished within a few years of each other but built in different parts of Mission Viejo.

Alta Finisterra went up around 1980 on the edge of the Casta del Sol golf course, which had opened to the public in 1974 as one of the young community's first amenities. Its 202 condominium units carry a Mediterranean design, and every interior road here was recorded as a private driveway rather than a public street, which is why the whole neighborhood sits on only a handful of homes rather than individual house lots.