Tocayo Hills

Tocayo Hills covers 102.9 acres and holds 175 addresses on 175 parcels, one for one, at a median parcel of 0.283 acres. Ten streets serve it, led by Campo Raso with 37 addresses, then Penasco and Calle Heraldo with 36 each. It is the tenth largest of the fifty San Clemente communities mapped here by area and the 25th by address count, a gap that comes from the 22.9 acres of private open space folded inside the line.

Residential Low Density land accounts for 66.9 acres inside the boundary and private open space for 22.9. The whole boundary lies inside the Forster Ranch Specific Plan area and it belongs to the Forster Ranch master association. The state fire hazard severity map places 92.5 acres in its Moderate class and 10.4 in High. Capistrano Unified's own school locator returned San Clemente High, Bernice Ayer Middle and Truman Benedict Elementary at all five interior points tested.

Tocayo Hills was developed in 1984 by Stearns Development, off Camino Vera Cruz in the Forster Ranch hills. It is a small neighborhood of four floor plans running from 1,230 to 1,432 square feet, three and four bedroom houses that buyers are often surprised to find on lots this generous. A good many of them sit on single loaded streets with nothing built across the road, which is where the canyon and city lights views come from, and the plans here were given decks. The word tocayo is Spanish for namesake, and it most likely reached Spanish from the Classical Nahuatl tocayoh, one who has a name. Three neighboring subdivisions carry it: Tocayo Hills, Tocayo Ridge and Tocayo Canyon.

Planning for the Forster Ranch property began in 1974, and the plan area now covers 1,982 acres bounded by San Juan Capistrano on the west and north. The first phase, the part the original landowner Estrella Properties laid out, was virtually complete by 1994, and Tocayo Hills went up early in that run. Forster Ranch Community Park and the entrance to the Forster Ranch Ridgeline Trail are both a short walk away.