Foothill Ranch

The 2000 census counted 10,899 people in 3,816 households. About 49.9% of households had children under 18, and 31.5% of residents were under 18. The median age was 32. The median household income was $89,038.

Foothill Ranch sits in California's 40th congressional district, in the state's 37th Senate District and the 72nd Assembly District.

Foothill Ranch was a master-planned community and a census-designated place before it joined Lake Forest. Lake Forest itself became a city on December 20, 1991. Until then the community had been called El Toro, which is Spanish for the bull, a name it had carried since 1863. In 2000 Lake Forest voted to expand its limits to take in the planned developments of Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills, which brought new homes and commercial centers to the city's northeastern edge. Foothill Ranch had been completed only four years earlier.

The 1991 vote on a name caused months of argument. Residents of the newer subdivisions thought Lake Forest sounded better than El Toro. Longtime residents complained that the change erased the town's history in favor of a name that referred to man-made lakes. El Toro High School kept its name.

Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park is a 2,500 acre regional park in Lake Forest, and its Borrego Canyon section has an entrance on Portola Parkway. The lower part of Borrego Canyon is tucked between two Foothill Ranch housing tracts and is covered with oak trees, where snakes, deer and birds live. The park has riparian, oak woodland, grassland, chaparral and coastal sage scrub, and it has over 17 miles of trail spread over 23 different paths, which makes it a draw for mountain bikers, hikers and horseback riders. It sits close to the Cleveland National Forest.

Red Rock Canyon, at the north end of the park, is known for red sandstone cliffs that are unique to the area. Erosion of the canyon has uncovered fossils. Vista Lookout, at 1,500 feet, is the highest point in the vicinity and looks out over the park and the suburban cityscape of Orange County. Serrano Creek, 7.5 miles long, runs through the park.

The dry climate has made fire a regular visitor. The 2007 Santiago Fire burned 90% of the property, and the Silverado Fire in October 2020 followed a similar path through much of the park. The Bond Fire in December 2020 did little further damage, and the Orange County Fire Authority said the Silverado burn scar largely held it back.

Mule deer, the only deer found in Orange County, are common, and an estimated 30 mountain lions move through the Santa Ana Mountains and their foothills. Lion sightings are uncommon, but they have closed the park on more than one occasion. Coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, gray foxes and skunks are frequent visitors. Red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks fly overhead, and the cactus wren and the endangered California gnatcatcher live in the park.

The park's own history shows what this land was before the houses. It was the first part of Rancho Cañada de los Alisos, a 10,000 acre ranch granted to Jose Serrano in 1842. After a period of cattle and crop farming, Serrano had to part with the property in 1864 because of a drought. Dwight Whiting bought most of the land in 1885, after the land developer J. S. Slauson had divided it up. Whiting turned a large piece of it into the town of El Toro, now Lake Forest. The rest of the ranch was left mostly untouched until a sale in 1959 to V. P. Baker and Associates, who have since built homes near the site.

Whiting is behind the forest in the name Lake Forest, too. In the first decade of the 1900s he planted 400 acres of eucalyptus groves near Serrano Creek as part of a lumber operation meant to draw development to the area. He was also instrumental in bringing the Santa Fe rail line through the region.

Lake Forest has its northeast end in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, and the annexation of Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills is what brought homes to that northeastern edge. The mountains run about 61 miles southeast from the Los Angeles Basin, mostly along the line between Orange and Riverside counties. Santiago Peak, at 5,689 feet, is the range's highest summit, and with Modjeska Peak it forms Saddleback Ridge. Gaspar de Portolá's expedition named the mountains after camping below them on July 26, 1769, the Feast Day of Saint Anne.

Much of the range lies in the Trabuco Ranger District of the Cleveland National Forest. The coastal plain gets 13 to 16 inches of rain a year, while the higher parts of the range get 20 to 30 inches, mostly between November and March. State Route 241, the toll road that passes through Foothill Ranch, runs along the foothills of the range.

Portola Hills is the district just east of Foothill Ranch. It was a census-designated place until Lake Forest annexed it, and it had 6,391 people at the 2000 census. It is built on the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains and is the highest part of Lake Forest, close to Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park and the Cleveland National Forest. Its tracts went up from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, and the name honors Gaspar de Portolá, who passed through the area in 1769. Rancho Santa Margarita is to its southeast, Mission Viejo to the south, and the unincorporated areas of Silverado and Santiago Canyon to the north and northeast.

Lake Forest had 85,858 people at the 2020 census and covers 16.8 square miles. The city is named for two man-made lakes, each run by a neighborhood association with clubhouses, pools and courts, and for a eucalyptus forest that is also man-made. Irvine is on the west and northwest, Laguna Hills and Laguna Woods on the southwest, Mission Viejo on the southeast, and Trabuco Canyon and Silverado Canyon on the east.

The Lake Forest Sports Park and Recreation Center opened on November 1, 2014, on 86.2 acres across the street from Saddleback Church, which makes it one of the county's largest sports parks. Heritage Hill Historical Park and Museum holds some of Orange County's oldest buildings, among them the Jose Serrano Adobe, built in 1863. The Foothill Ranch library is one of two Orange County Public Library branches in the city. Saddleback Church, led by Rick Warren, is the sixth-largest evangelical church in the United States.

State Route 241 passes through Foothill Ranch, with three interchanges in Lake Forest at Alton Parkway, Lake Forest Drive and Portola Parkway. The one at Lake Forest Drive is partial, with a southbound exit and a northbound entrance only. Interstate 5 runs along the western edge of the city with two interchanges, at Lake Forest Drive and El Toro Road. El Toro Road runs about 10.5 miles through the city, and at Live Oak Canyon Road it becomes Santiago Canyon Road.

Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch included, is served entirely by the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, which also serves all of Laguna Hills and parts of Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita. The district's high schools are El Toro, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Silverado and Trabuco Hills. El Toro High School opened in 1973, and its teams are the Chargers, with a bull for a mascot. Trabuco Hills High School sits on the border between Lake Forest and Mission Viejo.