Whittier, CA

Whittier backs right up against the Puente Hills in southeast Los Angeles County, and the green ridge behind town is the first thing you notice. Whittier Brewing Company pours in that core, with a food hall called Poet Gardens attached where several kitchens share the tables. La Monarca on Greenleaf is the coffee and pan dulce stop people name first. The restored 1892 depot and the old bank that held Nixon's first law office are part of an ordinary walk. The housing moves uphill with the decades. College Hills and Hadley Hills climb the first slopes on curving streets. Friendly Hills spreads postwar ranch houses over big view lots, while Whittwood and Michigan Park to the south are flat, semi-grid tracts built on old lemon and orange ground. The hills are the outdoor draw. Hellman Park at the top of Greenleaf is a hard climb up the Peppergrass Trail, and Arroyo Pescadero off Colima Road has an easier two-mile loop. On the flats, the Greenway Trail runs miles along an old rail line, and Penn Park has a waterfall and pond near city hall. Whittier Boulevard is the working street, carrying traffic past Whittwood Town Center, The Groves on the old Nelles school site and King Richard's antique mall inside a 1902 citrus packing house. There is no Metrolink stop in town, so most people drive and use the 605 on the west side. The hills cut both ways. The same chaparral that makes the trails also puts the upper streets inside the state's mapped fire hazard zones. In return, Whittier is one of the few places in the basin where a morning hike can start at the end of a residential street and finish with a latte on Greenleaf.