Skylines: Templeton and Paso Robles

A City Skyline in a Country Town

My town of Templeton is not known for its skyline, but the August theme for  The City Daily Photo Bloggers is "Your City's Skyline." Sorry, friends, but this is about all the skyline Templeton has. The feed and grain store is the tallest building in town and dominates what skyline here is.

Like many small towns in America, our commercial areas are spread out, not concentrated in one place. Instead of one big city we have several shopping centers that are closer to residential areas. In the Templeton photo above, you are seeing the few blocks of  commercial concentration on Main Street. This is the historic old town. At either end of this area will find occupied homes, and many of the commercial buildings used to be homes.

If Templeton has a skyline, you see it below. This was taken looking at the back view of Main Street, from across the river. From a distance, most buildings are swallowed by the trees and the Feed and Grain Store building.

The Paso Robles Skyline

Even in my other town, Paso Robles, just a few miles north of Templeton, the skyline is most likely to feature the tops of oak trees. The tallest buildings are about three stories high. What we consider downtown is concentrated around City Park. The public buildings are only a couple of blocks from the park. Spring Street is our main street that crosses town and is one of the streets that borders the park. Twelfth Street is another. You see the skyline looking out toward Twelfth Street  below.

Below you are looking toward the corner of 11th Street and Park Street.

Below is the skyline looking toward Spring Street from the Park.

As you can see, the oaks are taller than most buildings. The only way to get a true skyline photo is to get above the city, but the roads to the surrounding hills have no place to park anywhere near a clear view down.

Paso Robles has several different skylines, but most are in residential areas or smaller commercial areas. This is a medical complex at the east end of Spring Street. You can see the houses on the hill above -- and the trees.

The skyline below was taken from a frontage road  over the freeway that looks down at the newer part of town east of the Salinas River and the 101 Freeway. The Walmart Center is on the left. Between Walmart and the hill in the background sits the Kennedy Fitness Club. On the right is the tract where I live when I'm not in Templeton.

I like living in an area where you can hardly see the buildings for the trees, where surrounding hills and trees make it hard to photograph the skyline.

See real skyline photos from other City Daily Photo bloggers.

Does the city or town that you call home have a well defined skyline?

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