Canyon, Edison, To-the-Lake Trails

Lakes are few and far between in Orange County and for the most part are decorative contrivances created for city parks, golf courses and suburban neighborhoods.

Orange County’s only natural lakes are the Laguna Lakes in Laguna Canyon. The largest of the three lakes is delightful to visit, particularly for the hiker, because it’s accessible only by a trail through the engaging James Dilley Preserve.

Early maps referred to the lakes as laguna, Spanish for pond, while modern maps generally opt for the rather redundant Laguna Lakes. The lakes are replenished by rainfall and possibly some water from underground springs.

Barbara’s Lake, largest of the lakes, honors conservation activist Barbara Stuart. Fringed by bulrush, cattail and willows, the lake offers habitat for coots, grebes and mallards.

For more than a century, Irvine Ranch cowboys were the only ones to roam scenic Limestone Canyon, one of the wildest lands remaining in Orange County. Now, hikers can experience what is now known as Limestone Canyon Reserve by taking a guided hike.

Limestone Canyon, located in southeastern Orange County, borders Cleveland National Forest and Whiting Wilderness Park. The 5,000-acre reserve encompasses coastal sage scrub, chaparral and grassland communities, as well as oak and sycamore woodlands and even fern-surrounded dripping springs.

Limestone Canyon’s name came from the cement-making operation of early Santiago Canyon settler Samuel Shrewsbury. Limestone rock was melted, hammered into a powder, then mixed with sand and used as mortar.

Oso Creek Trail

Oso Creek is a tributary of one of Orange County’s largest waterways, San Juan Creek, which flows from high in the Santa Ana Mountains some 27 miles to the Pacific near Dana Point Harbor. Oso is one of the county’s creeks most altered by development: channelization, paving of the flood plain, loss of riparian habitat and biodiversity.

Oso Creek Trail has a collection of natural and cultural attractions along its banks to make it worth the casual hiker’s while. En route, you’ll encounter a handsome oak grove, a meadow, a butterfly garden and a plant maze. My family’s favorite is a peace obelisk, inscribed with the word “peace” in a dozen languages and displaying hundreds of copper relief peace emblems fashioned by community members. Now there’s something you don’t see very often alongside a trail!

West Bluff Trail

Several hundred thousand visitors a year walk or cycle around Upper Newport Bay, but very few hike the trails on the west side of the bay. Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve, which preserves the bluffs surrounding Upper Newport Bay, offers the hiker a special vantage point for observing one of the more pristine of Southern California’s estuaries.

From the bluffs look down on birds that gather here in large numbers—more than 35,000. The estuary is home to nearly 200 species of birds, including several endangered ones. Three uncommon bird species have spotted by the bluffs, including the burrowing owl, San Diego cactus wren and the California gnatcatcher.

The interpretive center, built into the bluffs on the northwest side of Upper Newport Bay, offers great panoramic views to visitors, who learn about the bay and the California coast’s precious wetlands from an excellent assemblage of exhibits and interactive displays. Kids enjoy Tunnel of Mud, a worm’s eye view of the bay.

Live Oak Trail

The soldier marching with Captain Gaspar de Portola's 1769 expedition who lost his firearm in this hilly region would no doubt be astonished at the number of Orange County place- names inspired by his mistake. Trabuco, which means "blunderbuss" in Spanish, now names a canyon, a creek, a plain, a trail, a road and even a ranger district of the Cleveland National Forest.

If the unknown soldier who lost his blunderbuss trekked this way again he would be amazed at the names on the land, and even more amazed at the land itself, so drastically has it changed. Maybe though, he would recognize Trabuco Canyon, at least that part of it saved from suburbanization by O'Neill Regional Park. Here the modern trekker can explore a small slice of the pastoral Southern California of two centuries ago.

Perimeter Trail

Located in the northwest corner of Orange County on the Buena Park/Fullerton border, this park owes its origin to our fascination with fossils. It seems twelve thousand years or so ago, the ring-tailed cat, ground sloth, and ancient mammoth roamed a region of meadows, marshes and woodlands, an environment altogether different from present-day Orange County.

Extensive fossil beds were discovered when sand and gravel was excavated during the 1950s and 60s for construction of the Santa Ana and Riverside freeways by the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans). Paleontologists identified the remains of prehistoric whales, bison and even a camel. By public demand, Emery Borrow Pit, as the excavation site was known, was purchased by Orange County in 1974, opened as Los Coyotes Regional Park in 1981, and later renamed for Ralph B. Clark, a county supervisor.

Exhibits in the park interpretive center tell the intriguing tale of prehistoric Orange County. The discovery of turtles, tapirs, turkeys and an unusual number of vertebrates prompted some researchers to mention the site in the same breath with the legendary La Brea Tar Pits. Other exhibits suggest what the OC was like from way, way back in time—the Pleistocene period of 100,000 years ago and the Late Cretaceous period of 75 million years ago.

El Modena Trail

One of Orange County’s oldest settlements, incorporated in 1888, the City of Orange now numbers some 140,000 residents. How do all those people fit into the city's 27 square miles? Get an answer to that question by taking a hike to a trio of promontories in the Orange Hills, where summit vistas include most of the city’s residences, as well as what remains of the natural environment in the city and county of Orange.

A mile-long ridgetop parkland, which appears as Santiago Oaks Regional Park on most maps and El Modena Open Space on a few, rises above the city and offers the hiker a rigorous hill-climb over slopes blanketed with thick clumps sage and prickly-pear cactus. Considering the highest summit in these hills is but 806 feet in elevation, clear-day vistas are mighty good, particularly to the west across northern Orange County to the LA basin and beyond, and north toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Panorama Trail

You could take advantage of the drive-through vista point on State College Boulevard just north of Bastanchury Road and skip the hike that begins nearby, but then you wouldn’t be a hiker, would you?

Besides, the hiker’s-only view you can get from Fullerton’s Panorama Trail is better than anything you can get from in—or near—a car. In fact, exactly what you see from the viewpoints atop this end of the Coyote Hills is detailed on signs. You will know and not have to guess that the view to the northeast includes Placentia, Yorba Linda, Brea and the Chino Hills and the view to the southeast includes Orange, Tustin, Irvine, Huntington Beach and Newport Bay.

Panorama Nature Preserve, located at the top of the hill, was set aside to safeguard the panoramic views, as well as a slice of coastal sage scrub habitat. The little refuge is habitat for many birds, including two rare ones, the coastal cactus wren and the California gnatcatcher.

Take a Hike and Save the Hills

Landowner Chevron Texaco, through its subsidiary Pacific Coast Homes, intends to construct 760 homes, plus commercial buildings on the last 510 acres of undeveloped land. In previous decades, the company subdivided another 1200 acres of hills with homes and golf courses.

Aliso Creek, Wood Canyon Trails

Aliso & Wood Canyons Regional Park, the largest park in the hills above Laguna Beach, preserves 3,400 acres of pastoral Orange County.

Most locals and other hikers refer to the low hills that back the Orange County coast from Corona del Mar to Dana Point as the Laguna Hills or “the mountains behind Laguna Beach.” Actually, the northerly hills are the San Joaquin Hills, their cousins to the south the Sheep Hills.

Here’s how nature writer Joseph Smeaton Chase described an outing in the Sheep Hills in his classic 1913 book, California Coast Trails: A few miles along a road that wound and dipped over the cliffs brought us by sundown to Aliso Canyon. The walls of the canyon are high hills sprinkled with lichened rock, sprinkled with brush whose prevailing gray is relieved here and there by bosses of olive sumac. Our camp was so attractive that we remained for several days.”