Bradbury, CA

Bradbury's city motto is Preserving Rural Tranquility, and the town takes it literally. This Los Angeles County city covers less than two square miles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, with the Angeles National Forest rising directly above its upper streets and Monrovia and Duarte wrapped around the rest. It became a city in 1957, the same day as Duarte, largely to avoid being folded into Monrovia. The effect is still obvious from the road. Bradbury feels less like a suburb than a collection of ranch properties, and the city even offers guidance on keeping horses in an environmentally sensible way. Homes spread across a steep range of lot sizes. Up in Bradbury Estates, behind gates, houses sit on multi-acre parcels, a few of them still working horse ranches. The ungated streets hold more ordinary suburban homes on smaller lots. Almost nothing here is dense. Life outdoors centers on the equestrian trails that thread through town and link to the Royal Oaks path heading into Duarte. Riders, walkers and joggers share them, with horses given the right of way. The national forest above offers rougher backcountry for anyone with the legs for it. Civic life fits in a single small building. For dinner, Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia is the closest walkable strip, and Cafe Mundial there changes its menu with the seasons and keeps a deep wine list. For groceries, residents drive down to the big stores on Huntington Drive, and the A Line stops a short way south in Duarte. In exchange, Bradbury offers something almost gone from the valley, a place where the evening sound is more likely to be hooves on a trail than traffic.