San Juan Bautista

Part of the San Benito County, San Juan Bautista is a small, secluded city primarily concerned with agricultural development than any other sense of neighborhood unity. The area spans less than 1 square mile and has a population that hasn’t exceeded 2,000 in the last decade. The city is largely dominated by a white and hispanic demographic who pride themselves on tending to the farmland and preserving whatever is left among this lost town.

San Juan Bautista is not known for its charming residential quarters or pleasant aesthetic. In fact, its not really known at all. Driving through the community, you’ll be met with lower middle-class neighborhood characteristics and unpolished residences. The common home is one story in size and sits on a small plot of land. Its estimated price varies from a couple hundred thousand dollars in price. Estimated annual incomes amongst the community are a measly $50,000/year, well below the California average. Aesthetically speaking, there’s nothing really to concern yourself here. Some residences have small gardens/front yards with tiny picket fences lining properties while others don’t have a front yard at all. Every once in a while you’ll see dusty lots, gritty house fronts and streets where roads just run off to dirt tracks that line the neighborhood streets. Common quarters amongst the community are largely bushy and unkempt with a lack of regular landscaping while outside the city limits lies acres of open and deserted grassland.

Like you’d think, the city of San Juan Bautista maintains a rather small town atmosphere where everyone knows each other. The downtown dining and shopping district centers around the San Juan Bautista Historic Commercial District. There you can find a handful of Mexican restaurants and corner cafes on busy intersections and/or concentrated along 3rd Street. Its primary use is to serve the hundreds of ranchers and farmers that need not travel outside the city’s limits for their necessities. For visitors, you’re left with nothing but the Mission San Juan Bautista, which serves as a preserved historic site in Native American history. But that’s about it.

With fewer people than attended my high school, San Juan Bautista can barely be considered a city onto itself. That said, the area has become a popular “bedroom” community for Silicon Valley types who want to live beyond the reaches of the city and don’t mind the commute.

The little ville is based around the mission that attracts tourists and helps support the handful of restaurants that accumulate around the mission—mostly Mexican places like Dona Esther’s.

Home here are still relatively moderately priced for the most part. You can probably buy a place for about $500K (though some places in the hills do reach the million dollar mark). As far as rents go, you can find a place for about $1300 for a 2 bedroom. Basically, it is pretty affordable whichever way you decide to go.

And there are a couple of bars. If you want to do anything else though, like go to a movie, you will have to drive into either Holister or Salinas. Which is also where you have to go to get groceries.

And, unfortunately since the local schools are pretty lousy, I can’t really recommend San Juan Bautista for families either.