San Juan Capistrano
The City of San Juan Capistrano is a unique community grounded in a history of native American culture, the Mission was established by Franciscan missionaries in 1776, and an agrarian past.
Boasting the widest variety of homes in Orange County, including those built prior to 1900 in its central district, a number of 10-million-dollar homes in the gated communities of the hills, and working ranches in its foothills. San Juan Capistrano is probably best known for the annual migration of the cliff swallows that reputedly migrate each year from Argentina to the Mission San Juan Capistrano.
The city is the site of California’s oldest residential neighborhood, Los Rios. The forty homes that remain here include three original adobe structures. The Montanez, the Rios, and the Silvas are all that remain of the adobes that housed the builders of the mission and the mission ranch workers in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. It is also the home of the oldest in use building in California, the Serra Chapel in the Mission and was the site of both the first vineyard and first winery in California.
