Lincoln Acres, Lincoln Acres, CA

Lincoln Acres is a small patch of unincorporated San Diego County, completely enclosed by National City near the point where Interstate 805 meets State Route 54. Granger Avenue and Ridgeway Drive are the streets that hold it together, and a newcomer can learn the whole community on one evening walk. The homes are mostly modest single-family houses on lots that started out as small farms. Farmers from the Midwest settled here in the 1930s, and the farms slowly turned into house lots. Keeping livestock is still allowed, a holdover from those farm years. The center of daily life is a single block of Granger Avenue. Lincoln Acres County Park, at 2717, has a playground, basketball courts, two gazebos, covered picnic tables and a community garden, and its community room is rented out for parties and meetings. Next door, the county library branch moved into a new building in 2013, roughly triple the size of the original, and a mural painted by Sal Barajas with help from neighbors decorates the building. Restaurants sit just outside the line on Sweetwater Road in National City. Home Coffee, at 1914 Sweetwater Road, pours the nearest independent espresso. Pho Mai Cali & Grill, in the center at 1635 Sweetwater Road, does pho, spring rolls and banh mi along with Thai tea and boba, and the same strip holds Hawaiian plate-lunch counters and taco shops. Groceries mean a short drive. The Food 4 Less on East 30th Street, just across the Chula Vista line, handles the weekly run, and Westfield Plaza Bonita, a few blocks away, adds a food court and the AMC Plaza Bonita theater. Interstate 805 and Route 54 are both right at the edge, so downtown San Diego, the South Bay and East County are easy to reach by car. Being next to that interchange is the catch. The freeways that make commuting easy run right along the community's edge, and their steady hum carries into the closest streets. Lincoln Acres stays small enough that the park, the library and the garden plots all share one block, and that block does the job a town square would.