East Whittier, CA

East Whittier is small and unincorporated, a Los Angeles County patch east of Whittier proper, close to where the city gives way to La Mirada. It covers only about a square mile, and most people who live nearby would have trouble saying exactly where the county land stops and the city begins. The streets are almost entirely postwar single-family houses, built as the citrus and walnut ranches were subdivided and laid out on a loose grid over flat ground. The hills of the Puente range rise north of town, and the closer a street runs to them, the more the land starts to tilt. Leffingwell Ranch Park on Santa Gertrudes Avenue in Whittier has lighted tennis courts and picnic tables, and the Arroyo Pescadero trailhead on Colima Road opens onto the Puente Hills Preserve, with a flat two-mile loop and steeper paths through coastal sage. Leffingwell Road carries the closest food, a short run of taquerias, seafood spots and pizza counters that locals use for takeout. The Whittwood Branch Library is a short drive away and holds a mural that tells the story of the ranches that became this neighborhood. Southern California University of Health Sciences, a chiropractic and integrative medicine school on Amber Valley Drive, is the one large institution in the community. Whittier Boulevard, also State Route 72, carries the supermarkets and big retail, and the 605 and 5 are the nearest freeways. East Whittier has no main street, city hall or real shopping district, so nearly every errand or dinner happens in Whittier or La Mirada. Living in East Whittier feels like living in Whittier under a different name on the county map, quiet tract streets that lean on the city next door for most of what makes a week.