| West Coyote Hills | |
| Mountain Range | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| State | California |
| District | Orange County |
| Coordinates | |
| Highest point | |
| - elevation | 184 m (604 ft) |
| Timezone | Pacific (UTC-8) |
| - summer (DST) | PDT (UTC-7) |
| Topo map | USGS La Habra |
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location of West Coyote Hills in California [1]
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The West Coyote Hills are a low mountain range in northern Orange County, California.[1] Parts of it lie within the city limits of La Habra and Buena Park, with most of it sprawling across western Fullerton between Ralph B. Clark Regional Park and Euclid Street north of Rosecrans Avenue. The foothill region to the east and south is known as Sunny Hills[2].
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The hills received their name from the nearby Rancho Los Coyotes; by the 1870s they were being called Coyote Hills.[3]
The West Coyote Hills was once a major oil field, dating back to 1890.[4]. Extraction has long since ceased, and most of the West Coyote Hills has been developed for residential and commercial use, as well as West Coyote Hills Park.
A tract measuring 510 acres (2.1 km2) across the ridge of the hills, owned by Pacific Coast Homes (a land development division of the Chevron Corporation), is the largest remaining tract of undeveloped land in north Orange County. Plans to build 760 homes on 179 acres (0.72 km2), while restoring and donating 352 acres to the City of Fullerton for use as the Robert E. Ward Nature Preserve.[5]. The plan has been met with much enthusiasm and opposition from the local community. A group called Open Coyote Hills has been leading the support[6] while a group called Friends of Coyote Hills, with a mailing list of about 3,000, has led the push to preserve the entire site as open space.[7]
U.S. Geological Survey researchers have found invertebrate fossils representing 184 taxa from 158 localities in the “San Pedro” Formation in the Coyote Hills, including various species of annelids, mollusks, arthropods, and echinoids; the fossils suggest a late Pliocene to early Pleistocene age for outcrops of the formation. The occurrence of the bivalve Solamen columbianum in the area marks its first occurrence as a fossil. The oldest fossil occurrence of the gastropods Tegula pulligo (Gmelin), questionably Haliotis cracherodii, and the crustacean Randallia ornata occur in the “San Pedro” Formation in the Coyote Hills.[8]