Culver Drive is a major

arterial road An arterial road or arterial thoroughfare is a high-capacity urban road that sits below freeways/motorways on the road hierarchy in terms of traffic flow and speed. The primary function of an arterial road is to deliver traffic from collector ro ...

in Irvine,

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

, running approximately from southwest to northeast. Its southwest end is at its junction with Anteater Drive and Shady Canyon Drive, at the meeting point of the Turtle Rock, Turtle Ridge, and

University Hills University Hills may refer to: *University Hills, Irvine, California University Hills is a housing development on the campus of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in southern Irvine, California, United States, consisting of 1226 for-sale ...

neighborhoods of Irvine. However, the road continues to the southwest under different names, Bonita Canyon Drive and then Ford Road, through a junction with

California State Route 73 State Route 73 (SR 73) is an approximately state highway in Orange County, California. The southernmost of the highway is a toll road operated by the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency named the San Joaquin Hills Transporta ...

and into

Newport Beach Newport Beach is a coastal city in South Orange County, California. Newport Beach is known for swimming and sandy beaches. Newport Harbor once supported maritime industries however today, it is used mostly for recreation. Balboa Island, Newport ...

. At its northwest end, Culver Drive ends at its junction with Furrow in the Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine. Its length is split roughly into thirds by its junctions with Interstate 405 towards its southeast end and with

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Califor ...

towards its northeast end. For much of its length it parallels

California State Route 261 State Route 261 (SR 261) is a state highway that forms part of the Eastern Transportation Corridor toll road system in Orange County, California. It runs from Walnut Avenue and Jamboree Road in Irvine north to SR 241. North of this ...

, which runs to its northwest. Culver Drive is named after Fred "Humpy" Culver, a local farmer who leased a large amount of land from the

Irvine Ranch The Irvine Company LLC is an American private company focused on real estate development. It is headquartered in Newport Beach, California, with a large portion of its operations centered in and around Irvine, California, a planned city of more ...

and built a large house with a windmill in 1910 at what came to be known as "Culver's Corner". At the time this corner was the junction of Culver Drive, Trabuco Road, and

U.S. Route 101 U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101 (US 101), is a north–south United States Numbered Highway that runs through the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, on the West Coast of the United States. It is also known as (The Royal Roa ...

; now it is where Culver Drive has its junction with

. When the University Park neighborhood of Irvine was first developed in the mid-1960s (five years before Irvine's incorporation in 1971), Interstate 405 had yet to be built near the neighborhood. Culver, then a two-lane road, formed the main route into and out of the neighborhood. As the later neighborhoods or "

villages A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

" of Irvine formed, Culver Drive became a natural boundary for many of them.See, e.g., ;

References

{{reflist Streets in Orange County, California Geography of Irvine, California