San Jose Hills, CA

The low range that gives San Jose Hills its name rises beyond West Covina and Walnut, and the community itself sits on the gentle ground below it. Across the community the change is mostly about what sits next door. The interior blocks are quiet streets of single-story houses, many from the early tract years, with the occasional older section still called Happy Homes by people who have been around a while. Sunshine Park on Deepmead Avenue handles the everyday outdoors, with a splash pad that stays busy through summer. For open space and golf, Industry Hills Golf Club at Pacific Palms Resort spreads across the slope a short drive south, and hikers head into the Puente Hills beyond it. La Puente Road is the local strip, and Nogales Burgers is the name everyone knows there, a burger stand sharing a row of storefronts with a hot chicken counter, a taco kitchen, a pizza place and a paleta shop. Cross the freeway to Gale Avenue in Industry and the options multiply. Groceries, pharmacies and clinics sit along Valley Boulevard and Azusa Avenue, and the 60 heads toward downtown Los Angeles one way and the Inland Empire the other. Sunshine Park is the only park of any size inside the community, so a real hike, a long bike ride or a soccer league usually means loading up the car. What living in San Jose Hills offers instead is location. A resident can grab dim sum across the freeway, burgers on La Puente Road and groceries on Valley Boulevard, all without once leaving the few square miles around home.