Park Santiago

Park Santiago covers 343.3 acres and the county records 1,186 parcels and 1,173 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 7,280 square feet. Thirty one named streets run 12.3 miles within it, 17th through 22nd Streets crossing Aspen St, Beechwood St, Cherry St, Clemensen Ave, Edgewood Rd and Fairmont St. The zoning layer gives 198.6 acres to single family residence and 22 acres to open space land, and still carries 7.6 acres as general agricultural.

Santiago Park sits inside the boundary at 34.6 acres, the largest city park inside any Santa Ana neighborhood boundary, and the city records a recreation center, a log cabin, a stage amphitheater, an archery range, lawn bowling, tennis courts, a ball diamond, wildlife viewing, a trail, a bridge and a trail head rest stop on it. Forty properties inside the boundary sit on the city historic register. Santa Ana Unified covers 88.1 percent of the boundary and Orange Unified covers 11.9 percent.

Through the late nineteenth century the ground was citrus, walnut and avocado orchards, with ranch houses and packing sheds standing in them like islands. As the city grew north, Bush, Spurgeon, French, Poinsettia and Santiago reached up to connect it to French Park and downtown. The shift from farming to housing came with the building boom after the First World War, when the orchards were cut into subdivisions. In 1922 the block bounded by Edgewood Road, Santiago Street, Santa Clara Avenue and North Valencia Street opened as Edgewood Park, marketed as a highly exclusive and restricted development with between four and eight walnut trees to a lot. That is where Edgewood Road and its palms come from. Oakmont Park, North Park and Bungalow Square followed.

Building slowed in the Depression and stopped in the war, which is why so much of the neighborhood is postwar. Older bones are still visible: the Goodwin House of about 1907 in Dutch Revival, the Taylor-Oglesby and Taylor-Gustlin sister houses, the second built in 1910 for the walnut rancher Abraham Gustlin, and the Enderle House of 1909 in American Craftsman. On the park side of the neighborhood the Works Progress Administration built the green at Santiago Park and the first lawn bowl was rolled there in 1938.