Santiago Canyon, California

Santiago Canyon is an unincorporated community in Silverado, California. According to the 2000 census, Santiago Canyon has several hundred residents living within its borders. Trabuco Canyon and Modjeska Canyon are tributaries of Santiago Canyon. Santiago Creek flows northwest from the canyon, then west into the Santa Ana River. Neighborhood communities in Santiago Canyon include Santiago Canyon Estates and Falcon View Estates. The landmark Cook's Corner motorcycle restaurant is also located within Santiago Canyon.

The ZIP Code is 92676, and the community is in area code 949.

Within the canyons, geology students will find excellent examples of exfoliation, in which rock layers peel back like layers of an onion, and of frost wedging, in which ice trapped in a crack expands to split a rock. Paleontology students will see fossils of millions of clams, snails, and small-shelled, squid-like creatures left behind during the five times that seas washed over the ground.

Appearing more than 12 million years ago, the highest points surrounding the canyons are Santiago Peak at 5,689 feet (1,734 m) and Modjeska Peak at 5,481 feet (1,671 m). Together the pair forms "Old Saddleback," an easily recognizable landmark.

The first people to live in the canyons were Native Americans(the Acjachemem). They arrived to find dense woods filled with live oaks, sycamores, mountain ash, and pines buffeted by winds. Dependent on acorns and less-plentiful pine nuts as their staple foods, the Native Americans cut paths through the riparian vegetation to reach oak and pine groves. After collecting the acorns, they carried them to canyon streams and immersed the nuts in the running water to leach out the bitter tannic acid. Once done, they carried the acorns to a large boulder or rock outcropping, where they used mortars to grind the nuts into powder. Over open fires, they cooked a porridge called "atole."

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