Rolling Hills, CA

Rolling Hills is what the Palos Verdes Peninsula looked like before the shopping centers arrived, a whole Los Angeles County city kept rural on purpose. Residents incorporated it in 1957, and the same developer, A.E. Hanson, later shaped Hidden Hills in the San Fernando Valley on a similar horse-country idea. Seen from the peninsula as a whole, the city is the quiet middle. Inside, the only nonresidential buildings are City Hall, the community association office on Portuguese Bend Road and Los Angeles County Fire Station 56. The town changes more with the terrain than with the housing. Ridgetop lots along Crest Road look out over the harbor and the basin, while canyon lots below sit tucked into brush and eucalyptus. Everywhere the pattern holds, with low white houses in the ranch and hacienda styles set on an acre or more, fenced for horses. Outdoor life is private and on horseback. Chadwick School, an independent K-12 campus next door, and the schools of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District fill the morning traffic on the roads outside. Food, groceries and coffee all come from the neighboring cities, mostly the Peninsula Shopping Center and the Promenade in Rolling Hills Estates, which is a few minutes away but still means getting in the car for every errand. Every guest, contractor and delivery driver passes a staffed gate, and the lack of any shop or cafe inside town limits means there's no spot to run into people by chance. On many afternoons the loudest sound in Rolling Hills is a horse on the trail below the road.