Southeast Antelope Valley, CA

Southeast Antelope Valley is the loose band of unincorporated Los Angeles County that picks up where Palmdale's east-side tracts stop. On a map it sits between the city and the orchard town of Littlerock, with Pearblossom Highway cutting a diagonal through it and the San Gabriel Mountains standing close along the southern horizon. Near 47th Street East the blocks still hold a fair number of houses, a mix of stick-built homes and manufactured homes. There are no named subdivisions and no downtown, just the county's grid of lettered avenues and numbered streets. DryTown Water Park on Avenue S is the city's seasonal water park, with slides, a lazy river and a splash zone, and Sam Yellen Park on the same avenue opened Palmdale's first dog park. Weekly shopping starts at the Vallarta Supermarkets store on the Palmdale edge, a full Latino grocery that saves most households the longer run into town. Head the other direction and Charlie Brown Farms in Littlerock is where people take out-of-town guests for date shakes and fudge. The orchard stands past it open up in summer. Sun Village's Jackie Robinson Park is the nearest county park to the east, and nearly everything social means a drive to Palmdale or one of the small towns along the highway. What Southeast Antelope Valley offers in return is elbow room with a supermarket close by, and a view of the San Gabriels that no neighbor's second story is going to block.