Where Is the County’s ‘Mason-Dixon’ Line? Start at Costa Mesa Freeway and Meander South

No one disputes there is a North and South Orange County. But the location of our own Mason-Dixon line is open to debate.

Yorba Linda, Anaheim, Brea, even Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana are solidly in the north, no argument there. And San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills and El Toro are obviously south.

But what about Irvine? Tustin? Newport Beach?

The only consensus is that the line separating north and south is ever changing--with time, definition and the location of the person who is doing the defining.

Some people--primarily those who live in Irvine and northward--place the border at the Costa Mesa Freeway, which means South County includes Irvine. Others--who tend to live farther south--draw the line at the El Toro Y, the point where the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways merge as Interstate 5. And at least one city official--Santa Ana’s mayor--insists that dividing Orange County into two regions does not go far enough because four distinct regions of the county are emerging.

Mark Baldassare, UC Irvine professor of social ecology, set the border at the Costa Mesa Freeway (or California 55) when he conducted the poll measuring different attitudes and perceptions, north versus south, for The Times Orange County edition.

Baldassare chose the Costa Mesa Freeway because it divides the newer, master-planned communities found predominantly in the south from the older, more traditionally suburban communities of the north. Irvine should be considered a South County community, he said, because its master-planned design has served as an example to newer communities that have since cropped up farther south.

“It’s a style, both in development and living, that distinguishes the south from the north, and Irvine started it. And when you cross the freeway, that’s the first place where it becomes noticeable.

“Irvine really reflects the nature of the South County,” he said. “It really begins geographically with Irvine.”

Even so, Baldassare said, “my feeling is that the line is moving south, even as we speak.”

It has already moved there, if you consult the Automobile Club of Southern California. The AAA’s “Street Map of Southern Orange County Area,” dated December 1988, begins at the El Toro Y--which, by the way, is actually in Irvine.

The boundary has indeed been moving south over the years. A decade or two ago, the border was perceived to be the Santa Ana River, a good dozen miles north of the Y. Curiously, the Santa Ana River also runs largely parallel to the--albeit arguable--dividing line of the Costa Mesa Freeway. With the river as a boundary, the cities of Costa Mesa, most of Santa Ana and even Orange fell into the south. And everything south of those cities was populated back then mainly by crops and grazing cattle.

Today, drawing the line at the Costa Mesa Freeway puts not only Irvine but also Newport Beach and the newer part of Tustin in the South County. (Baldassare said he makes an exception with Villa Park, which despite its location to the southeast of the freeway, falls into the North County style of development.) The new development in Tustin, Baldassare said, has the look of Irvine, and the city is experiencing rapid residential and industrial growth like other South County communities.

One of the streets that cross the Costa Mesa Freeway provides a dramatic example. In Tustin, Edinger Avenue is bordered by modern-looking, earth-tone military housing next to the Marine Corps’ helicopter station, plus green agricultural fields and landscaped industrial parks. Crossing the freeway into Santa Ana, the industrial buildings are older and less attractive, strip commercial development dominates, and next to littered railroad tracks is the rundown, graffiti-filled cluster of Minnie Street apartments.

But not all streets change so markedly as they cross the divide. Katella and Taft avenues, for example, look almost identical on either side of the freeway. And Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young points out that redevelopment along 1st Street has made the older part of that thoroughfare more attractive.

While 4th Street on Tustin’s side is bordered by rows of office buildings, in Santa Ana it leads to the redeveloped, Latino-flavored and historic downtown, “which some would say is more charming,” Young said.

Baldassare is not alone in calling the Costa Mesa Freeway the dividing line.

“Freeways have for a long time formed logical boundaries,” noted Orange County’s chief planner Mike Ruane. In Orange County, the Costa Mesa Freeway divides the old communities from the new and provides an easily identifiable boundary for conducting countywide studies, such as comparing the balance of jobs and housing, north versus south, said Ruane, director of planning for the county’s Environmental Management Agency.

Look at a street map of the county, he suggested. North of the Costa Mesa Freeway, “everything is in squares,” requiring drivers to make lots of starts and stops, he said. But south of the freeway, the roads form a “linear corridor system,” designed to transport drivers for longer trips. Further, in the largely flat north part of the county, streets all are laid out in north-south and east-west grids. South of the Costa Mesa Freeway, they are plotted diagonally, so that they parallel the contour of the county, he said.

Irvine City Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan agreed that the “South County begins with Irvine.” However, Sheridan, a real estate agent, thinks Tustin does not belong to the south group, noting that the North Orange County Board of Realtors includes Tustin within its boundaries--but not Irvine.

As for real estate prices, north versus south, “prices are expensive everywhere,” she said. Houses in the ritzy area of north Santa Ana or in Anaheim Hills are priced as high as anything in Mission Viejo, she said. While “anything by the ocean is wild,” Sheridan said, “you can’t find a home in the Tustin hills for under $400,000.”

Dana Point City Councilman Mike Eggers adamantly disagrees with Sheridan and others believing that Irvine is in South County. He calls the Costa Mesa Freeway boundary “crazy.” The South County really begins at the El Toro Y, extending toward the coast to Emerald Bay and winding its way inland to the foothills, he said.

“To people in the South County, the Y split in the freeway is the change. It’s psychological. As soon as you get to the split, you know you’re in the north,” Eggers said.

Eggers is vice chairman of the South Orange County Leadership Conference, an alliance of public agencies in the South County. Irvine is not a member, he points out.

“Everybody is looking at the old definition of South County,” thinking of the area as still largely unpopulated, he said.

“People need to know that there is life below Irvine,” Eggers said. “Irvine has always been the magic marker on the map. Everybody always thought there was nothing but orange groves below Irvine. And that’s not so today.”

Indeed, Santa Ana Mayor Young recalls that when he was growing up in north Orange County, the South County “was all agricultural, and they were just starting a new suburb called Irvine. And even that was in the sticks,” he said.

Today, Young subscribes to the Costa Mesa Freeway-divide camp for plotting the county’s north-south split but sees the “next evolution” as divvying up the county into four regions--north, south, central and western.

The north will be composed of the cities around Brea and Yorba Linda, while the south will be everything below the Y formed by Interstate 5 and Interstate 405, he said. The central part of the county will include Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine and Garden Grove, while the west will be made of cities such as Cypress, Los Alamitos, Huntington Beach and other coastal communities.

Under that split, Young foresees the south part of the county becoming more aligned with northern San Diego County, while parts of the western region, such as Seal Beach, will identify and do more business with Long Beach. Central Orange County, he said, will become “a self-contained urban area . . . .”

“People will want to live, work and shop in an even tighter radius because of the traffic,” he said.

And he goes even further.

“I would predict, 15 to 20 years from now, we’ll see cities merging, for very practical reasons--more effective delivery of services, efficiencies and for political clout outside Orange County as well as inside.”

Young sees Orange County ultimately congealing into five to seven cities, each large enough to compete with the state’s other big cities for attention and funds at the state legislature.

“The only reason it wouldn’t happen is that it would put a lot of politicians out of business,” Young said. “But I believe the resources will be so constricted, we’ll all have to overcome our political egos.”

Times staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this story.

Costa Mesa Freeway: The Great Divide

The Costa Mesa Freeway (California 55) winds its way from 30th Street in Newport Beach to the Riverside Freeway (California 91) in Anaheim Hills, and serves as a general dividing line between north and south.

The South Cities: Dana Point, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Tustin.

The North Cities: Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda.