Mission Hills, San Diego, CA

Gardens and old Spanish Revival houses set the tone in Mission Hills, among San Diego's earliest suburbs, spread over the hills looking down on Old Town and Mission Valley. Horticulturist Kate Sessions left her mark on its gardens, and the Mission Hills Nursery she founded in 1910 still sells trees and flowers on Fort Stockton Drive. Most houses here went up between about 1908 and 1930, and the mix runs from Craftsman bungalows to Prairie School and Spanish Colonial Revival homes, several by architects William Hebbard and Richard Requa. The city recognizes two historic districts in the neighborhood. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, modern houses were built along the canyon rims, facing out over the valley, downtown or the bay. Fort Stockton Drive once carried a streetcar line, and the small business clusters it left behind are still where people eat. Fort Oak cooks over wood in a former car dealership from the Atomic Age and keeps a raw bar going. Wolf in the Woods, also on Fort Stockton, is an intimate small-plates room with design drawn from New Mexican folklore, and San Diego Magazine named it Restaurant of the Year. For coffee, Heartwork Coffee sits on Goldfinch Street just over the Hillcrest line, roasting its own beans and baking pastries. The canyons give Mission Hills its outdoor life. Robyn's Egg Trail winds through Mission Hills Park, and the Allen Road Canyon Trail drops into another canyon nearby. Pioneer Park, a historic neighborhood park, hosts free Friday evening concerts in July, with blankets and picnic baskets spread across the grass. Presidio Park and the Old Town state park are just down the hill to the west. Groceries mean the Pavilions on West Washington Street, just inside Hillcrest, and the shops along West Lewis Street and Goldfinch handle smaller needs. Washington Street runs downhill to Interstate 5 and Old Town, and downtown and the airport are an easy drive from here. Hills and canyons make for winding streets that do not connect easily, so getting from one side of the neighborhood to the other on foot can take longer than the map suggests. The payoff comes at the canyon edges, where the streets go quiet in the evening and the city lights come on below.