A throwback lifestyle high in the citrus belt

Lemon Heights is a semi-rural outcropping with panoramic hillside views and the smells and sounds of early California. Residents of the Orange County community say it’s more a state of mind than a place with physical boundaries.

From Tustin, a drive north on Newport Avenue and a right turn on Foothill Boulevard will lead past one of the area’s last lemon groves. There the road begins to narrow and climb, and houses can be spied behind gates or down garden paths. Peacocks can sometimes be heard. This is Lemon Heights.

“It’s a community more than anything,” said Joe Hunt, a supervisor with the county’s Geomatics/Land Information Systems. Of the 800 square miles that make up Orange County, 288 square miles lie in what is referred to as unincorporated North Tustin. Of that, Hunt estimated two square miles make up Lemon Heights.

History

“Lemon Heights was desert-like until C.E. Utt and James Irvine developed it around the ‘20s,” said Carol H. Jordan, a Tustin historian. At that time, the hilly area was part of the Irvine Ranch. Utt owned the Utt Juice Co. at the corner of Main Street and Prospect Avenue. “They planted lemon trees and eucalyptus trees and piped water up there so it could be subdivided.”

The hilly enclave emerged as an extension of the agricultural community that settled the area. It shared a nebulous northern border with southern Cowan Heights, another community in the unincorporated area.

Insider’s view

Longtime resident Barbara Hannegan and her husband bought a home on Smokewood Drive in 1970. The four-bedroom, custom ‘60s modern ranch sold then for $60,000.

“People built on the edge of nothing,” Hannegan said. “They wanted to be up in the heights. Everybody else was a ‘flatlander.’ ”

Housing stock

Today Lemon Heights attracts people eager to buy a piece of old California, even if their 200-degree view is of new construction in surrounding Tustin, Orange, Irvine and Santa Ana. The housing stock of about 1,000 homes includes seven original landmark estates built 100 years ago by the judges, politicians and business owners who founded the Tustin area.

Houses are priced from about $900,000 to $5 million, said Melinda Queathen of Seven Gables Real Estate. Many of the custom homes are on large lots with panoramic views. Some have one-acre lots or larger with facilities for horses. Buyers sometimes tear down older homes and erect new ones with swimming pools and tennis courts.

Jim Cruickshank of Seven Gables pegged the median price for a home in Lemon Heights at $1.5 million.

“These are mostly all custom homes,” he said, and include California Mission, Craftsman, French Country and Victorian, with more contemporary semi-custom homes as well.

Good news, bad news

New development sometimes causes tension among neighbors. One resident built a helicopter pad; another a Mediterranean-ish villa with a fat red-brick wall around it.

Report card

There’s one school in Lemon Heights. Arroyo Elementary falls within the Tustin Unified School District. On the 2004 Academic Performance Index, the grade school scored 908 out of a possible 1,000. From there, students generally attend Hewes Middle School, which scored 857, and then Foothill High School, 760.

Residential resale figures for the entire 92705 ZIP Code, which encompasses a geographic area greater than Lemon Heights:

1995...$288,000

2000...$405,000

2003...$600,000

2005...$800,000*

*Year to date