MissionViejo.com

Mission Viejo (/viˈeɪhoʊ/) is a city in Orange County, California, United States in the Saddleback Va

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Mission Viejo, CA

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Mission Viejo, California

Mission Viejo was purchased by John Forster, also known as "Don Juan," an Englishman by birth who became a Mexican citizen. During the Mexican–American War, Forster provided fresh horses to United States military forces which were used on the march of San Diego to retake Los Angeles.

Mission Viejo was a hilly region primarily used as cattle and sheep grazing land, since it was of little use to farmers. This city was one of the last regions of Orange County to be urbanized due to its geologic complexity. In 1960, early developers dismissed most of the land in Mission Viejo as simply "undevelopable".

Donald Bren, an urban planner who later became the president of the Irvine Company, drafted a master plan which placed roads in the valleys and houses on the hills, and contoured to the geography of the area. The plan worked, and by 1980 much of the city of Mission Viejo was completed. During the late 1970s and the 1980s, houses in Mission Viejo were in such high demand that housing tracts often sold out before construction even began on them. The houses and shopping centers in the city are almost uniformly designed in a Spanish mission style, with "adobe"-like stucco walls and barrel-tile roofs. Many point to Mission Viejo as the first and largest manifestation of Bren's obsession with Spanish architecture. Bren's company was also the creator of the developments in Irvine and Newport Beach. The company expanded its operations and went on to build the Lakes project in Tempe, Arizona, Mission Viejo Aurora in Colorado and was the initial master planner of Highlands Ranch, both in the Denver Metropolitan area.