Mission Viejo, California

Mission Viejo is a suburban commuter city in the Saddleback Valley of Orange County, California, in the United States. Its name is a corruption of Misión Vieja, Spanish for Old Mission, and recalls Rancho Mission Viejo, the large Spanish land grant from which the community was founded. The city is regarded as one of the largest master-planned communities ever built under a single project in the United States, rivaled in size only by Highlands Ranch, Colorado. It consists of residential properties, offices and businesses, and is known for tree-lined neighborhoods that earned recognition from the National Arbor Day Foundation. Mission Viejo was incorporated on March 31, 1988, covers about 18 square miles (46.7 square kilometres) at an elevation near 125 metres, and had 93,653 residents at the 2020 census. The Census Bureau treats it as the principal city of a wider Orange County urban area of 646,843 people.