Land Use

During the earliest days of The Irvine Ranch, cattle, horses and sheep grazed on the land. In the late 1800s, as farming operations expanded, the Ranch became an agricultural empire, known for a variety of crops, including avocados, oranges and lima beans.

By the late 1950s, urban sprawl from Los Angeles was pushing towards Orange County, prompting the Irvine Company to create a large-scale, master planned community that called for a balance of housing, job centers, shopping centers, schools and generous recreation and abundant open space that would all blend both functionally and aesthetically together.

As planning on the Ranch evolved through the decades, greater emphasis was placed on open space preservation. For more than 40 years, preserving open spaces and providing a variety of recreational opportunities has been a core philosophy of The Irvine Ranch Master Plan. The original Master Plan called for 10,400 acres – or roughly 11 percent of the 93,000 acre ranch – to be set aside as parks and open space. Today, more than half of the entire Irvine Ranch – more than 50,000 acres – has been permanently preserved as parks, trails and natural open space.