Mission Viejo, California

Mission Viejo is a master-planned community that emerged from the drawing board before a single house was built. In the early nineteen sixties the Mission Viejo Company purchased thousands of acres of the old Rancho Mission Viejo cattle ranch and commissioned a master plan for an entire town built from scratch. The first homes went up in the mid nineteen sixties.

Every street, school site, and shopping center was predetermined in a comprehensive plan that was unusual for its era. The community gained international attention when it hosted venues for the nineteen eighty-four Los Angeles Olympics, with the cycling road race course running through its streets. Mission Viejo incorporated as a city in nineteen eighty-eight and has often ranked among the safer cities in the country.

The old Rancho Mission Viejo cattle operation continues on adjacent land, one of the last working cattle ranches in Southern California.