Crest, Crest, CA

Every Fourth of July, a parade climbs from South Lane County Park up Albatross Place and Suncrest Boulevard to Nancy Jane County Park, and most of Crest seems to line the route. The small unincorporated community sits on a granite ridge above El Cajon in San Diego County, and the parade dates back to 1946. The houses tell the story of the hill. A few small cabins remain from the 1920s, when lots here were sold as summer getaways. Around them are ordinary family homes and some much larger places on sloping acreage, many of them built after the 1970 Laguna Fire or the 2003 Cedar Fire took the houses that stood before. Roads curve with the terrain, yards run to boulders and chaparral, and some lots look down on the El Cajon Valley. Nancy Jane County Park is the community's gathering spot, with tennis and basketball courts, horseshoe pits, a shaded pavilion and old trees over the lawn. South Lane County Park is the opposite, about ten acres left undeveloped, where a trail wanders through grassland and rocky hills. Walking here mostly means the quiet streets themselves. The Crest branch of the county library is at 105 Juanita Lane, and Crest School, part of the Cajon Valley Union School District, teaches the elementary grades. Groceries, restaurants and most errands mean driving down the hill to El Cajon, so a dinner out or a pharmacy run is a planned trip rather than a quick walk. Neighbors tend to run into each other at the library, at Nancy Jane on a weekend afternoon and along the parade route each summer. That drive is the main cost of the view. The nearest freeway is less than three miles off in a straight line, but the road down winds for nearly four. Crest still has the feel of the cabin colony it began as, a place where people bought a summer lot, built a little cabin and then never quite went back down.