Castroville, Castroville, CA

Castroville sits in northern Monterey County where Highway 1, Highway 156 and Highway 183 meet, a short drive from Salinas and from the harbor at Moss Landing. The whole town covers roughly a square mile, so it reads as one small neighborhood strung along Merritt Street, with lettuce, strawberry and artichoke fields starting right where the last blocks end. The houses are modest and sit close together on small lots, many of them an easy walk from Merritt. The town was laid out in the 1860s and has been farm country ever since, and the housing still looks built for that work. It is low, practical and compact for a place surrounded by open ground. For fresh air, Japanese School Park has the grass and play equipment, and the skatepark is in town. Up Highway 1, the Monterey Bay beaches around Moss Landing are a quick drive. Evening walks here tend to end at the edge of a field, usually with fog drifting in from the bay. Merritt Street is where the eating happens. Missing Hole Donut Shop, at 11572 Merritt, opens before dawn and closes at noon, so the morning crowd goes early. La Fortuna Bakery at 11286 sells Mexican pastries and bread, and Hanabi Japanese Restaurant at 11252 serves sushi when you want something other than tacos. Days run on foot and by car in about equal measure. The Andy Ausonio Library and a handful of small markets sit within a few streets of each other, but a big grocery run means driving to Salinas, and anything after dark usually does too. The three highways that make the place a crossroads also run right alongside the blocks, so traffic noise is a constant and every trip out starts with merging onto one of them. A block off Merritt Street you can be standing at the edge of a working field, and that closeness to the crop sets Castroville apart from its bigger neighbors.