Alpine, Alpine, CA

Alpine sits about 2,000 feet up astride Interstate 8 in the San Diego County backcountry, close to 30 miles east of downtown San Diego. Town life gathers along Alpine Boulevard and Tavern Road, and past those two roads the houses thin out into oak, granite and chaparral. Homes are almost all single-family. Smaller, older houses sit near the boulevard, while larger custom homes climb the hillsides on bigger parcels with long driveways. Many side roads have no sidewalks, and plenty of houses were built or rebuilt after the 2003 Cedar Fire burned through the area. Wright's Field is the open space people walk most. The 245-acre preserve, run by the Backcountry Land Trust, starts from a short paved path off Tavern Road by Joan MacQueen Middle School. A perimeter loop of about three miles crosses grassland, oak woodland and vernal pools, and in spring the meadow turns yellow with goldfields. Crumbling walls from two old homesteads, the Wright place and the Schmidt place, stand beside the trail. Beer is the local draw. Mcilhenney Brewing pours from the original Alpine Beer Co. site at 2363 on the main boulevard, run by the father and son who founded that brewery, and there are no TVs in the room. Hess Brewing took over the brewery's old pub at 1347 Tavern Road, with pizzas and a patio built around a fire pit. Groceries mostly mean the Albertsons on the boulevard, and the county library branch is on that same road. Nearly every errand starts with the car. The local union school district runs the public schools through middle school, and high school falls under the Grossmont district. Work is the sticking point for many households. Jobs in San Diego mean a long daily drive west on the 8, and anything bigger than a grocery run tends to mean El Cajon. What people in Alpine value is the quiet that starts a block off the boulevard, where the evening sound is wind in the oaks.