La Crescenta Montrose, CA

La Crescenta-Montrose is a county-run foothill area in Los Angeles County, one that plenty of drivers pass through on the 210 without realizing it has a name of its own. The freeway works as the town's dividing line. North of it, La Crescenta's streets sit on a diagonal grid that keeps climbing until the canyons take over. Small postwar houses fill the lower streets, larger hillside homes sit higher up, and a scattering of apartment buildings lines the main boulevard. Outdoor time starts close to home. The big county park, Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park, sits in the middle of things with room for a long walk or a game. Just over the Glendale line, the old stone Le Mesnager barn marks the start of a wilderness park where foothill trails head uphill into the chaparral. Foothill Boulevard is where people eat, and a good share of it is Korean. Solmaru Sullungtang serves the milky ox bone soup it is named for, in a busy center that also holds barbecue and tofu houses. Tickle Tree Cafe is the morning stop, known for scratch pancakes and Four Barrel coffee. Errands split between two main streets. Foothill Boulevard has the supermarkets, a Korean market and the county library branch, while the older Montrose shopping blocks along Honolulu Avenue technically sit across the line in Glendale. Almost everything runs by car, and the 210 puts Pasadena and downtown Glendale within an easy drive. There is no city hall or civic center, so the county handles what a council would elsewhere, and much of the shopping and dining that residents think of as their own belongs to a neighboring city. What holds the community together is the valley itself, one long slope where nearly every street ends up running into the mountains.