Boronda, Boronda, CA

Boronda is a small residential community on the flat valley floor just west of Salinas, and most people treat the two names as one stretch of ground. The name comes from Jose Eusebio Boronda, an early Californio who built an adobe house here in the 1840s, and that house still stands along Boronda Road. What you see today is newer. Streets of single-family houses fill most of the area, and the blocks have the even, repeating look of subdivisions laid out in a short span rather than built lot by lot. Boronda Meadows Elementary, a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade campus on Larkin Street, welcomed its first students in August 2005, which is a fair marker for when much of this land filled in. Green space is the thin part. Laurelwood Park and the Rossi Rico Parkway Trail are the closest options, within about half a mile of the community on the Salinas side, and a bigger day outdoors means getting in the car. Breakfast is the local ritual. Danny's Donut Shop, at 1365 North Davis Road, opens early and puts out fresh donuts twice a day, and it is the best-known stop nearby. The Costco food court handles the cheap lunch. Beyond that, the surrounding strip centers hold the usual mix of Mexican restaurants, bakeries and sandwich counters, so a sit-down meal is a short drive rather than a stroll. Costco and Vallarta Supermarkets cover big grocery trips, both within about a quarter mile of the edge of the community, and the Northridge Mall cinema gives the area an evening option a bit farther along. Everything about the setup assumes a car, from the grocery run to the morning donut, with Boronda Road and North Davis Road tying the pieces together. The old adobe sits only a short walk from the Costco lot, and seeing the two together says plenty about how quickly this corner of the valley has changed.