Lemon Grove, CA

Lemon Grove is a small East County city a quarter hour's drive from downtown San Diego, wedged between Routes 94 and 125, with San Diego, La Mesa and Spring Valley on its borders. It covers under four square miles, and it has kept a separate identity since voters made it a city in 1977. The name is literal. Citrus farms covered the area in the early twentieth century, and by World War II the groves were giving way to suburbs. The town kept the fruit as its symbol, and the giant lemon sculpture where Lemon Grove Avenue meets Broadway, first built as a 1928 parade float and plastered into a permanent landmark in 1930, still carries the words Best Climate On Earth. A less sunny chapter matters too. In 1931, parents here won the Alvarez case against the local school board, an early court victory over school segregation. The civic center clusters around the trolley. The Main Street Promenade, a plaza and park built beside the Lemon Grove Depot and opened in 2013, hosts a Saturday farmers market. City Hall, Treganza Heritage Park and the Lemon Grove Historical Society's Parsonage Museum are steps away on Main and Olive streets. Homes across the city lean midcentury and single-family, with about half built before 1960. The city's downtown village plan steers new apartments toward the blocks around the depot. Places to eat are casual and personal. Zest Wine Bistro, on Broadway, runs a patio, a wine club and wine tours. Coop's West Texas BBQ, on Lemon Grove Avenue, cooks over brick pits that burn wood beneath the meat and is known for brisket and Texas sausage, though it now opens only on weekends until it sells out. Two Orange Line stations, Lemon Grove Depot and Massachusetts Avenue, connect to downtown San Diego, and the two state routes handle the drive. The quick trips come at a price, since both freeways and the trolley line slice through town and their noise reaches the nearest homes. Lemon Grove's civic life fits in a few blocks, with City Hall, a history museum, the Saturday market and a trolley platform all within sight of one another.