Desert View Highlands, CA

On a map of Palmdale, Desert View Highlands shows up as a hole, a small block under Los Angeles County jurisdiction that the city grew all the way around. The whole area measures well under one square mile and has been tallied separately since 1970, yet most drivers pass through without noticing any border. That is because the streets look like the rest of west Palmdale. Roughly eight hundred single-family houses, mostly stucco tract homes on standard suburban lots, filled in gradually over the decades. By high desert standards the spacing is snug, closer to a city subdivision than to the ranch parcels a few miles out. The difference is administrative. Road work and planning here run through the county instead of Palmdale's City Hall. Public school assignments follow the same Palmdale-area districts as the surrounding city blocks, and mail carries a Palmdale address. Parks come from next door. Marie Kerr Park, a couple of miles west on 30th Street West, is the big one, with walking paths, a public pool, a softball complex and the Palmdale Amphitheater for outdoor shows. Smaller city parks and recreation centers sit within a short drive in most directions. The one restaurant inside the boundary is El Toreo West, a Mexican kitchen with a long menu of combination plates. Everything else is a few minutes away, with grocery chains, drugstores and large retailers lining the nearby commercial strips, and the Palmdale Metrolink station a short drive east for trains toward Los Angeles. In return, Desert View Highlands puts most homes within a few blocks of a major shopping street, closer to daily errands than many addresses deep inside the city limits.