Egger Highlands, San Diego, CA

Egger Highlands is named for the Egger family, whose 1946 land gift made room for the area's first Catholic parish, St. Charles, and it sits low and flat in the South Bay part of San Diego between Imperial Beach and Palm City. Most of daily life happens along Palm Avenue, Saturn Boulevard and Coronado Avenue, and the salt ponds at the bottom of San Diego Bay mark the northern edge. The area joined the city in 1957, when the whole Otay Mesa-Nestor area had fewer than a thousand homes, and building took off in the late 1960s. Most of what stands today is a residential grid from that boom and the years after it. Robert Egger Sr. South Bay Community Park, where Saturn Boulevard crosses Coronado Avenue, is the center of things, with a gym, ballfields and picnic shelters, and a 2025 renovation brought a new playground and outdoor exercise equipment. The Otay River Valley bike trail runs behind Southland Plaza, and the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park and the Imperial Beach shoreline are each a quick drive south and west. Food runs from Tijuana-style tacos to Thai and Filipino plates. Chula Tacos, at 1719 Palm Avenue, grills carne asada over charcoal, spins adobada on a trompo and presses tortillas to order, and it stays open until midnight. Across from the park on Coronado Avenue, Mae's Thai Kitchen turns out green curry, pad thai and drunken noodles, and the same block has Filipino grill counters, a bakery and an ice cream parlor. Vons on Saturn Boulevard and Farm Fresh Market on Palm Avenue handle groceries, and Southland Plaza holds more shops. The Palm Avenue trolley station is a few blocks east in Palm City, and the Blue Line runs from there north to downtown or south to the border. Palm Avenue is a busy, car-oriented strip of drive-throughs and parking lots, and crossing it on foot takes patience. With the bay at one end and the border a few miles south, Egger Highlands is the kind of South Bay neighborhood where the park, a late taco and the trolley all sit a short ride apart.