Forster Ranch

Forster Ranch is a master association covering 433.3 acres and 1,075 addresses on 824 parcels, at a median parcel of 0.249 acres. It is the second largest of the fifty San Clemente communities mapped here by area and the third by address count. Fifty one streets run inside it, led by Domador with 91 addresses, then Riachuelo, Felipe and Calle Heraldo.

Residential Low Density land accounts for 245.9 acres inside the boundary, Residential Medium Low Density for 48.1, private open space for 46.1 and Residential Very Low Density for 36.1. The whole boundary sits inside the Forster Ranch Specific Plan area, which the plan puts at 1,982 acres bounded by San Juan Capistrano to the west and north and by the Prima Deshecha landfill site beyond it. The state fire hazard severity map splits the boundary almost in half, 223.7 acres Moderate against 209.6 High. Capistrano Unified's own school locator returned San Clemente High, Bernice Ayer Middle and Truman Benedict Elementary at all five interior points tested.

The city's 1982 General Plan put a Development District over its four inland ranch properties so that nothing could go up without a detailed plan first. Centex Development Company took on the undeveloped land under a 1992 development agreement, and the Forster Ranch Specific Plan was adopted in November 1998 for Laing Forster Ranch LLC, which owned what was left. Most of the homes went up in the 1980s. By 2009 the area held 2,245 single family houses and 343 condominiums spread across at least two dozen separate tract neighborhoods including Tocayo Hills, El Encanto and Rimrock. The plan area covers 1,982 acres in the northwest of town, and two ridgelines cross it, one running east to west along the San Juan Capistrano line and one running north to south, which is why the place reads as a set of separate communities rather than one continuous tract.

Water explains its shape. Forster Ranch sits on the inland part of the Prima Deshecha Canada watershed, and the stream that drains it is shadowed all the way to the coast by Camino de los Mares, its greenbelt and Shorecliffs Golf Course before it reaches the ocean at Poche Beach. The street names kept the cattle work alive after the cattle left. Domador is a tamer of animals, Caballista a horseman, Arreos the tack a horse wears, and they run alongside Estampida, Estancia, Cercado and Bonanza.