Avocado and Mountain View

Avocado and Mountain View covers 715.8 acres and holds 2,496 addresses on 1,313 parcels, at a median lot of 0.354 acres, with 516 of the addresses carrying a unit designator, the most of any zone in the city. Twelve zoning categories appear inside it, led by 343 acres of Residential Estate, 59.3 acres Residential Urban and 52.5 acres Planned Development, with 12.8 acres under the Town Center Specific Plan and 28.3 acres Commercial General. One hundred and eleven named streets carry 19.78 miles of centerline, 175 segments of it private. The Phillip S. Paxton Equestrian Center occupies 5.4 acres at 18661 Buena Vista Avenue and 4.07 miles of trail run inside the boundary, 1.41 of them on the El Cajon trail.

Two elementary campuses stand here, Mabel M. Paine on 9.6 acres at 4444 Plumosa Drive and Linda Vista on 8.7 acres at 5600 Ohio Street, along with Calvary Christian School on 2 acres. The city designates two evacuation facilities inside the boundary, the Yorba Linda Library and Cultural Arts Center at 4802 Lakeview Avenue as a reception center and cooling station, and the Paxton Arena at 18611 Buena Vista Avenue as a temporary evacuation point. Oil defines the ground: the state field boundary layer places 367.6 acres inside the abandoned Yorba Linda field and 321.3 acres inside Richfield, and the city flags 2,446 of the 2,496 addresses as sitting over one of them and 481 as sitting on or beside a recorded well. It also records 289 septic systems here, the most of any zone in the city.

The name is the crop. The first lemon and orange groves were planted in 1910, the Yorba Linda Citrus Association formed in 1912, and the ranch roads that served those groves are still the street grid here. Avocado Avenue, Avocado Circle, Avocado Grove Lane, Citrus Grove Lane, Lemon Drive, Valencia Avenue and Valencia Circle all survive, and Avolinda Drive splices the fruit into the town's own name. Citriodora Avenue is subtler: it names the lemon scented gum, one of the eucalyptus varieties growers planted in long rows to shelter groves from the wind, and lines of those trees still stand along Orange County roads and the edges of housing.

Under the groves was oil. The city publishes 115 plugged wells inside this boundary and two state oil fields, Yorba Linda and Richfield, run beneath it, with Aera Energy recorded as operator on 75 of the wells. The lease name that appears most often, Olinda Fee Four, points back over the hill to the Olinda field, where Edward Doheny drilled the first well in 1897 and the town of Olinda grew up around it. Olinda Street here is the local reminder.