Long Canyon

The city adopted the plan in 1980 and republished it in 2003. A 2013 amendment changed only a small site on Madera Road. The plan calls Long Canyon the most rural of the villages, with single-family homes on estate-sized, irregular lots that follow the hills, and an equestrian center tied in by trails. It gives the village 245.7 acres: 195 acres of housing allotted 689 homes, a 9.5-acre park and 41 acres for the equestrian center. The 683 homes built come close to that number. Typical lots run from about 3,800 square feet on Arbor Court to nearly half an acre in The Vineyards, where two lots exceed an acre. The plan also blocked building here until a fire station opened in Country Club Village, and it drew Long Canyon Road as the extension of First Street.

The Long Canyon Garden Society covers 516 homes north of the road, behind a guard-gated entrance, with pools, clubhouses and a fitness center. The Oaks at Wood Ranch (89 homes) and The Vineyards (48) have their own gates south of the road. Old Windmill Park sits on the plan's park site and has a lawn, a playground, a basketball court and a lighted path. The Canyon View and Long Canyon trails climb into the hills. In 2001–02, 463 acres south of the road became the public Wood Ranch Open Space Park. Long Canyon was under a mandatory evacuation order during the 2018 Woolsey Fire.

The lay of the land

Gated hillside village of mostly two-story homes on private streets, with shared pools and clubhouses, a public park on Long Canyon Road and trails into the surrounding open space. The Wood Ranch Specific Plan's fourth village, and the one it calls most rural.

Wood Ranch Specific Plan (Table D, 2003 edition): Long Canyon Village has 15 residential planning units, a 9.5-acre public park (Planning Unit 58) and a 41-acre equestrian center site (Planning Unit 68) at the east end of Long Canyon Road near First Street; whether an equestrian center was ever built there is not clear. By home counts and the plan's land use map, the built tracts match planning units this way: Tract 4583 Unit 1 (The Oaks) = PUs 60, 66, 69 and 70; Units 2–4 = PUs 55 and 61; Units 5–6 = PU 54; Units 7, 13 and 14 (Hearthstone) = PUs 62 and 67; Units 8–9 = PUs 56 and 57; Units 10–12 = PU 59; Unit 15 = PU 64; Unit 16 (The Vineyards) = PU 65; Tract 5100 (Laurelwood Heights) = PU 63. The plan does not name tracts, so this matching is the guide's own. The village's housing mix in the plan is 89.3 acres of low density (233 homes), 76.03 acres of medium density (282) and 29.9 acres of intermediate density (174), an average of 3.5 homes per acre. The plan projected about 2,205 residents. Long Canyon makes up most of Phases VI–VIII, the last of the plan's eight building phases. Occupancy there depended on extending what the plan calls First Street (now Long Canyon Road) east to Bluegrass Street as a second way in and out. The plan's maps show public open space (PU 71, about 430 acres) on the ridge north of the village and private open space (PU 100) across the hills to the south. Across the ranch, 1,855.7 of the plan's 3,009.68 acres (61.7 percent) carry open-space designations, and the plan counts about 75 percent of the ranch as some form of open space once the golf course and parks are included. Design rules include no wood roofs in Fire Zone IV, native and fire-resistant planting next to open space, grading that follows natural contours, keeping slopes steeper than 20 percent natural where possible, and saving significant oaks and sycamores where feasible. Architectural guidelines were to be set village by village. The recreation map shows bike trails along the main roads, Long Canyon Road included, and equestrian trails through the hills. Plan standards call for equestrian trails at least 14 feet wide and bike paths at least 10 feet wide. Homes in Long Canyon are also sold under informal names such as Hearthstone, Laurel Wood and Long Canyon Estates, and these do not follow the recorded tract boundaries; this guide uses Hearthstone only for Units 7, 13 and 14, where it is most common. Laurelwood Heights (Tract 5100) is a different place from the Laurelwood tract in Country Club Village. This guide groups the village by its recorded tract units.