Palmdale unincorporated, CA

The sky over unincorporated Palmdale is a workplace. This patch of Los Angeles County land on the northeast side of the city wraps around Air Force Plant 42, where military aircraft, many of them classified at the time, have been built and flown for decades, and test flights are as much a part of the day as the weather. The airfield itself sets the layout. Around the edges, county roads cross open desert, industrial yards and a few pockets of older homes. Housing is scarce and scattered. What exists tends to be older single-family houses and mobile homes on larger county lots, spaced well apart, with the city's own subdivisions starting to the south and west. Most people with a Palmdale address actually live inside city limits. Blackbird Airpark, on the edge of the plant, shows off Cold War reconnaissance planes including the SR-71 that gave the museum its name, and a second airpark down the road adds a longer row of aircraft that were designed or tested here. Desert Aire Golf Course on East Avenue P offers a public round with jets passing overhead. There is no dining scene out here. Meals, groceries, the mall and the Metrolink station are all a few minutes south in the city proper, reached along the big avenues, which are wide and built for traffic rather than walking. The tradeoff is that this is industrial land first. A home in unincorporated Palmdale comes with few neighbors, no local shops and a landscape shaped around a military airfield rather than around daily errands. Plant employees get a commute measured in minutes, and a view of aviation history that most aircraft buffs only see on a visit.