Ла Каняда Флинтридж, Калифорния

La Cañada Flintridge — the full canonical name, tilde included, for the registry — is a garden suburb in the foothills of the San Gabriels with two claims far beyond its size. The first is on Mars: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's storied centre for robotic exploration, lies within the city's boundaries, and every rover that has ever trundled across the red planet was flown from this quiet Los Angeles County hillside — arguably no small town on earth commands so much of the solar system.

The second claim is the archive's documented venue: Descanso Gardens, the 150-acre estate of the newspaper magnate E. Manchester Boddy, now one of Southern California's most beloved public gardens. Its camellia forest — tens of thousands of blooms under a canopy of native coast live oaks — is among the largest in the world, joined by rosarium, Japanese garden and springtime tulip meadows; its lawns and pavilions host concerts in the flowering season, which is how a botanical garden entered a conductor's event records. Between the mission-era name (la cañada — "the ravine"), the Angeles Crest Highway climbing into the mountains directly from town, and Mars mission control behind the oaks, La Cañada Flintridge is suburbia with an unusually long reach.