La Habra Heights has the hillside roots of the Hass avocado

La Habra Heights looks and feels different from much of the Los Angeles Basin on purpose. It sits only about 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles, but its hills still hold large lots, winding roads, oak woodlands, citrus trees, avocado groves, riding trails, and wide views. The city incorporated in 1978 to protect that rural residential feel.

That rural look came from a real farm past. Water lines reached the hills in 1921, and avocado planting spread across the slopes. By 1930, a local survey counted 1,292 acres of avocado orchards, along with citrus, flowers, nursery stock, and other small crops. Some streets still carry avocado-variety names, so the old orchard story is built into the map.

The most famous piece of that story is the Hass avocado. UC Riverside traces the variety to Rudolph Hass, a postman who bought seedling trees from A. R. Rideout of Whittier in the late 1920s. The tree was a lucky seedling. Hass tried to make it into the common Lyon variety, but his children liked the fruit from the odd tree, so he kept it.

Hass patented the variety in 1935, and nurseryman H. H. Brokaw helped spread it. The fruit looked different from the smooth green avocados people knew then, but it carried well, bore well, and had rich flavor. Over time, that La Habra Heights seedling became one of the most familiar avocados in grocery stores.

The hills carry a nice double story. La Habra Heights is a quiet, spread-out city near a busy metro area, and it is also one of the places where Southern California farm experiments left a mark on everyday kitchens far beyond California.