Walnut, CA

Walnut shares borders with eight other communities in Los Angeles County, from West Covina and La Puente to Pomona and Diamond Bar, yet it keeps a lower profile than almost any of them. Mt. San Antonio College covers a wide campus off Grand Avenue and employs more people than anyone else in town. Each spring its stadium hosts the Mt. SAC Relays, a track and field meet held every year since 1959, which brings athletes from far outside the valley. Homes are almost all detached and were built as planned tracts, though the range is wider than that word suggests. Ordinary two-story models share the map with custom houses several times their size on hillside lots. Streets bend around the slopes, and cul-de-sacs branch off the few through roads. Parks are small and spread out, about a dozen of them run by the city. Suzanne Park and Creekside Park are among the larger ones, with lawns and reservable picnic space, and the Puente Hills ridge trails along the southern edge handle longer hikes and runs. Food in Walnut means a trip to one of the shopping centers, most of them on Valley Boulevard or Grand Avenue. The plazas lean toward Asian noodle shops, bakeries and boba counters. Aroma Craft Coffee on Valley Boulevard gets mentioned first for coffee, known for its avocado toast as much as its espresso. The clearest tradeoff comes from the college. On Relays weekends and other big stadium days, Grand Avenue near the campus fills with cars and the side streets absorb the overflow. The rest of the year, most of the traffic on those roads is local, moving between the houses in the hills and the shopping centers below.