Whittier Narrows, CA

Think of Whittier Narrows as the shared back yard of the southern San Gabriel Valley. The Los Angeles County area is mostly parkland and flood-control ground, and the people who use it on any given Saturday drive in from Rosemead, Montebello, Pico Rivera, South El Monte and beyond. The land exists because two rivers squeeze through a low gap in the hills here, and the Army Corps of Engineers built a dam in the 1950s to catch what they carry in a wet winter. Everything upstream of that dam is meant to be able to flood, so houses are almost absent. Farther in are ball diamonds and soccer fields, disc golf, BMX racing, horse trails and paved bike routes that follow the river corridors. Whittier Narrows Golf Course has three nines and a lit range for after-work practice, and its clubhouse cafe is one of the few spots in the basin to sit down for a meal. There are also a few odder corners. Hobby pilots fly radio-controlled planes over their own field, a shooting range sits off to one side, and a lot full of tanks and armored trucks opens to visitors late in the week. For groceries, dinner or coffee, the answer is always a neighboring town. Garvey Avenue and Rosemead Boulevard are the closest strips, while two freeways, the 60 and the 605, cross the open ground, which makes the area easy to reach from much of the county. The tradeoff runs the other way from most places. Early on a weekday morning, though, with the fields empty and birds working the edges of the lakes, it can feel like a much bigger stretch of country than a flood basin between two freeways.