Rancho Santa Margarita

The land is the ancestral home of the Acjachemen people. A village called Alume stood in what is now the city, between Trabuco Creek and Tijeras Creek. In 1810 the Trabuco Adobe was built near that village as an outpost of Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The name is a little confusing. It comes from Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores, a land grant that was actually in San Diego County. The city itself falls inside the borders of Rancho Mission Viejo. The city seal reflects both ranches, with their brands on the border and Santiago Peak in the background. The tower in the foreground stands for the Rancho Santa Margarita Lake Tower.

One piece of aerospace history belongs here too. Hughes Aircraft Company's Microelectronic Systems Division moved in from Irvine in May 1988. By August 1992 the plant had closed, and the division went to Carlsbad because of budget cuts in the aerospace industry.

Before there was a city, there was a ranch, and a very large one. John Forster, who went by Don Juan, pulled several land grants together into Rancho Mission Viejo in 1845. In 1864 he added Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores, and his holdings came to about 200,000 acres, which made him one of the biggest landowners in California. The Rancho Mission Viejo grant was patented to him on August 6, 1866, for 46,432.65 acres. The city later took its place inside that ranch.

After Forster died in 1882, two Irish immigrants, Richard O'Neill Sr. and James Flood, took the land in equal shares. Flood put up the money. O'Neill was a cattleman, so he agreed to earn his half by managing the ranch. He expanded the herd, introduced row crops, and made it the largest wheat producer in Orange County. In 1939 the ranch was split in two. The Flood family kept the San Diego County piece, and in 1942 the Marine Corps bought all 123,620 acres of it to enlarge Camp Pendleton. Richard O'Neill Jr. kept the Orange County land, which came to 52,000 acres after the war.

The family turned from ranching to building in 1963, when the O'Neills and their partners formed the Mission Viejo Company and started the planned community of Mission Viejo on 11,000 acres. Rancho Mission Viejo is now described as home to four master-planned communities, and Rancho Santa Margarita is one of them, along with Mission Viejo, Las Flores and Ladera Ranch. The ranch still runs 600 head of cattle and more than 500 acres of citrus trees.

O'Neill Regional Park follows Trabuco Creek and Live Oak Canyon in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. It covers 4,500 acres, long and narrow, and about 7.5 miles of Trabuco Creek run through it. The owners of the O'Neill Ranch donated the first 278 acres for recreation, and later purchases brought the park to its present size. The Acjachemen village site of Alume, the same village the city's early story starts with, lies inside the park. The creeks usually carry water in winter and early spring, and the valleys hold native coast live oak and sycamore forests.

About 23 miles of trails serve hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders, and there are picnic and barbecue areas throughout. The Arroyo Campground has 79 campsites, among them eight large group sites and five horse camping sites. The hillsides carry cactus, wild buckwheat, sagebrush and chaparral. Bobcats live in the park, and so do mountain lions and rattlesnakes, so visitors are told to take care.

The area first showed up in federal numbers as a census designated place in 1990. The city incorporated on January 1, 2000, and on that day it took the longest city name title in California from Rolling Hills Estates, whose name had 19 letters against Rancho Santa Margarita's 20.

Rancho Santa Margarita is a general law city with a council-manager form of government. It is also a contract city, so it hires out services instead of running them itself. The Orange County Sheriff provides police services, and the Orange County Fire Authority handles fire protection.

Trabuco Canyon is a small unincorporated community in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, partly inside the Cleveland National Forest. It lies north of the city, and Plano Trabuco Road runs from the top of the canyon south to Rancho Santa Margarita. The 2020 census counted 1,020 people there, against the city's 47,949. Trabuco is Spanish for blunderbuss. One story credits a Franciscan friar with the 1769 Portolá expedition, who reported that a blunderbuss was lost in the canyon. A mission was once meant to go in the canyon, but it was built at San Juan Capistrano instead.

The Trabuco Adobe went up in 1810 next to the Acjachemen village of Alume. John Forster, who held a Mexican land grant here, set up Rancho Trabuco. In the early 1900s people tried to mine tin in the canyon and left behind tunnels (now closed for public safety), the stone foundation of an ore-processing stamp mill, and several dams on the creek. The Trabuco Canyon National Forest was created in 1907 and folded into the Cleveland National Forest in 1908. One of the last California grizzly bears was killed in the canyon that same year.

Las Flores is an unincorporated community just south of the city. It had 5,995 people at the 2020 census, spread over 2.6 square miles near the corner of Oso Parkway and Antonio Parkway. It shares the city's ZIP Code, 92688, and it is named for the Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores land grant, which lay about twenty-five miles south. Las Flores was set up in the 1990s, while Rancho Santa Margarita was still unincorporated, and it was never annexed when the city incorporated in 2000. Tesoro High School is there.

State Route 241, a toll road, gives the city its freeway-style access, along with several surface streets. Santa Margarita Parkway and Antonio Parkway are the two major thoroughfares. Avenida De Las Banderas, Avenida Empresa, Avenida De Las Flores and Alma Aldea are the minor ones. Alicia Parkway ends in the city and links it to Mission Viejo.

The median age in 2020 was 40.0 years, and 37.0% of the city's 17,188 households had children under 18. About 69.6% of occupied homes were owner-occupied. The 2023 American Community Survey estimate put the median household income at $146,827.

In 2010, 31.8% of residents held a bachelor's degree and 16.4% held a graduate or professional degree, which the census data describes as well above the California average.

In 2020 the city had 17,188 households, and 60.9% of them were married couples. The average household had 2.79 people. Residents under 18 made up 22.8% of the population and those 65 or older made up 11.4%. There were 17,606 housing units, and 97.6% of them were occupied. Per capita income in the 2023 estimate was $63,535. The 2010 census found a median age of 36.0 and children in 46.2% of households, so the city has grown older since.

Two public districts split the city. Students inside the Saddleback Valley Unified School District go to Trabuco Hills High School or Mission Viejo High School, and both of those campuses are in Mission Viejo. Students in the Capistrano Unified School District go to Tesoro High School in the Las Flores neighborhood. Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School (Saddleback Valley) and Las Flores Middle School (Capistrano) serve the middle grades.

Public elementary schools are Cielo Vista, Trabuco Mesa, Robinson Ranch, Arroyo Vista, Melinda Heights and Tijeras Creek. Private options include St. John's Episcopal Day School, Serra Catholic and Mission Hills Christian School. Santa Margarita Catholic High School, a private school tied to the Catholic Diocese of Orange, is in the city.

Santa Margarita Catholic High School opened in the fall of 1987 and was the first Catholic high school to serve South Orange County. Groundbreaking was on April 18, 1986, and the first class had 216 students. The 42-acre campus sits beside the San Francisco Solano parish church. Enrollment was 1,673 in grades 9 through 12 as of fall 2018. The school is an International Baccalaureate World School, one of three in California, and its teams, the Eagles, compete in the Trinity League. Admission is open to students of all faiths.

Television gave the city some fame. The Real Housewives of Orange County is set in Coto de Caza, but it is mainly filmed in Rancho Santa Margarita, where many of the cast do their shopping, dining and business. A map in season four of Arrested Development puts the fictional community of Sudden Valley roughly where the city sits.

Several athletes came out of the area, among them hockey player Jonathon Blum, Olympic soccer gold medalist Joy Fawcett, and NFL quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Mark Sanchez. Palmer and basketball player Klay Thompson both attended Santa Margarita Catholic High School.