5 min
Overview
One of Orange County’s most popular and accessible trails is also one of its most beautiful and diverse. The 3,789 acre Aliso and Woods Canyons Regional Park in Aliso Viejo features riparian woodlands, grassy meadows, rolling hills, views of the Santa Ana Mountains and Laguna Canyon, and sandstone caves all within a short drive from most of Orange County and northern San Diego County. This 11 mile loop is an all-day adventure that showcases the variety and beauty of the canyons. Jimson Weed (AKA Sacred Datura) The park protects a landscape that has a long history of human use. The Gabrieleño and Juaneño bands of Native-Americans co-existed on lands currently contained within the park, using Aliso Creek as the boundary between their lands. The region’s abundant wildlife, regular water sources, access to the ocean, large acorn masts, and built in shelters from nearby caves assured that both tribes would be able to live a rich and stable lifestyle. Like most of the Native-Americans in Southern California, both tribes were displaced by the Spanish, who “acquired” the land and re-dubbed it Rancho Niguel. The area maintained the name and line of ownership until 1960, when the land was purchased by three separate OC cities . The Mission Viejo Company purchased the land in 1979 and opened it as a public park in 1990, offering recreation opportunities to hikers, equestrians, and mountain bikers. Yerba Mansa The region is also part of geologically significant rock formation with extensive oil reserves. Aliso/Wood Canyons represent the southern end of the Monterey formation, which stretches from Santa Maria and Kern County to about Mission Viejo. This formation is the source of Los Angeles’ and Southern California’s rich fossil fuel reserves. While the “easy oil” has mostly been extracted from this formation, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated in 2013 that the Monterey formation could yield about 13.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil through the use of hydraulic fracturing (better known as “fracking”
Trail Stats
18.5 km
304 m
258 m
14 m
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