July 7, 1856: At its very first meeting, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to repair “the principal road through the county … leading from San Francisco to Santa Clara.”
The expense was “not to exceed $50.” (Just think how far $50 would go to fix El Camino Real today.)
The very stuffiness of the minutes of that first meeting jerk the reader into the different world that challenged those who governed the newly minted county, which had just spun off from San Francisco.
July 11, 2006: The current San Mateo County Board of Supervisors marked the 150th anniversary of that first meeting by reading its minutes aloud.
Meeting in 1856 in a Redwood City warehouse owned by J.V. Diller, two of the three-member board — James Berry and Charles Clarke — also ordered (for less than $300) an “Iron Safe” to keep county “Books, Papers, and Treasure.”
The supervisors fired a magistrate who was “incompetent and refused to perform the duties of his office,” and appointed two new magistrates. They also agreed to pay two bills totaling $511, “when the money is in the treasury.” And they arranged to lease rooms from Mr. Diller for county offices and courts for $40 a month for six months, “with the privilege of 12.”
There was another huge difference between today’s five supervisors who read the historic minutes and the two who launched the county’s government 150 years ago: Two of the current supervisors, Rose Jacobs Gibson and Adrienne Tissier, are women; in 1856, women could not vote, much less serve as supervisor.
Serving San Francisco
A lot of history has surged through San Mateo County since the Gold Rush. That history is still pushing us forward.For its first century, the county primarily served San Francisco. The giant redwoods of its southern mountains — chopped and sawed into boards and shingles — built the new capital of the West. Its farms, ranches and dairies fed the city. San Francisco’s water supply and airport are located in San Mateo County.
“Without San Mateo County, San Francisco would have had a hard time,” says Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association. “Much of the political, environmental, economic, and suburban history of San Mateo County has been affected by San Francisco.”
In the decades that followed the county’s founding, San Francisco’s new-rich tycoons financed a railroad, and built their country homes in the oak-studded hills and meadows of the county. Waves of immigrants cut the trees, worked the estates, and settled in the small towns that served them.
In the next century came the automobile. People of more moderate means moved to the country for affordable housing; they began building today’s cities and suburbs.
More dramatically and formatively, county residents also endured a great earthquake, a Depression, and two world wars.
In its last 50 years, the county has enjoyed a massive population and economic boom following World War II. Silicon Valley has become a household word around the world — a symbol of the scientific and computer revolution that is changing our lives. Its scientific and technical epicenter was Stanford University; its financial core lay with the venture capital firms along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.
Starting about 1960, backlash from the explosive growth in the county and the Peninsula generated the environmental movement, which has slowed and channeled that growth. Its results can be seen in the preservation and beginning restoration of San Francisco Bay, and in the preservation of forests, farms and open spaces across San Mateo County’s mountains and Coastside.
Over those momentous years, the county’s population has soared more than 300-fold, from an estimated 2,500 in 1856 to today’s 725,000. And it’s still growing.
This history — and the individual threads of lives and communities that make it — are the subject of a year-long celebration. The Board of Supervisors, the San Mateo County Historical Association, and city historical associations are working together to bring that history alive in a series of events throughout the year.
Really dirty politics
San Mateo County was born of the every-man-for-himself anarchy of Gold Rush California.The immigrants flooding San Francisco included alumni of Sing Sing and Tammany Hall back East, who were after riches the old fashioned way — by organizing, intimidating, killing and stealing.
They arrived in fertile territory. California just became a state in 1850; it was still writing its laws. San Francisco, which extended south to San Francisquito Creek, the old boundary between missions, had both a city and a county government.
So there were positions aplenty to be bought and paid for. “It was pretty chaotic,” says Nita Spangler, a history buff from Redwood City who has followed county history for 60 years. For people seeking power, “it was almost necessary to have your own militia.”
By 1856, several things were changing, Ms. Spangler explains. The first glow was off gold mining, and in 1855 there was a big financial crash. More important, she says, women and families began arriving; they helped tame the population and bolster the impetus for reform.
“People were trying to get good government,” she says, but notes that often, “‘Good government’ meant ‘good for me.'”
A movement born in the south county to form a new county — to be called Raymundo — was mostly ignored. Folks in Woodside and Redwood City felt disenfranchised because of the distance to the county seat in San Francisco. Their supervisor, the notable Dr. Robert Orville Tripp, had to ride his horse to San Francisco and back for meetings.
In 1856, Horace Hawes, a state assemblyman from San Francisco who later moved to Redwood City, introduced a bill to consolidate the City and County of San Francisco into a single government. After some political infighting, the Consolidation Act passed in April and included a provision that a new county be created for the southern portion of the territory.
Thus, San Mateo County was formed through a political deal; the mobsters planned to take over the new county and enjoy its political spoils.
Descriptions of the election for officers in the new San Mateo County read like a political farce. The thugs took over the polling at three northern precincts and systematically stuffed ballot boxes and created voters — some taken from the passenger list of a recently arrived steamer.
In one precinct with 25 eligible voters, 297 ballots were tallied. Overall, an unlikely 1,800 votes were recorded in a county with a population of less than 2,500 — including women and children who couldn’t vote.
Ultimately the court threw out votes from the fraudulent precincts, and San Mateo County government dodged the mob.
First 50 years; redwoods and mansions
Starting with Spanish times, lumbering brought rugged men and colorful characters to attack the giant redwoods with ax and saw. Sawmills, first powered by water and later steam, sprouted in the canyons and gullies, as the giant trees were reduced to boards and shingles.In Woodside, Dr. R.O. Tripp was the first to haul boards and logs to Redwood City, and float them to San Francisco using the power of tides.
Innovative and versatile, Dr. Tripp soon found it easier and more profitable to run a store than haul logs. He operated the Woodside store — now a historical museum — for more than 50 years. It became a community center to the fledgling town, providing a stagecoach stop, post office, and library. Plus, people could get their teeth pulled or “plugged” —filled — in the dentist’s chair, which is still there as part of the historic exhibit.
Just to the south, the town of Searsville served the lumberjacks and local farmers with necessities, ranging from a couple of hotels to a school and several popular saloons. By 1879, the town gave way to Searsville Lake, originally planned to provide water to San Francisco.
By the late 1860s, lumbering on the east side of the mountains was winding down. The trees had been cut up and over Skyline; loggers were tackling the larger redwood forests toward the coast.
On October 17, 1863, the first train of the San Francisco-San Jose Railroad puffed down the tracks from San Francisco through Menlo Park to Mayfield, now Palo Alto. Then it backed up for a gala picnic hosted by Gov. Leland Stanford on the banks of San Francisquito Creek.
This trip marked the beginning of a new era on the Peninsula. Rich San Franciscans built mansions and estates near the railroad line; they could retreat from the summer fogs of San Francisco, and keep supplied year-round with fresh produce from their county farms.
The names of the families in the south county alone recall the biggest names of the time: Ralston, Atherton, Mills, Sharon, Hopkins, Donohoe, Hooper, Folger, Schilling, Douglass, and many others. Now the names mainly refer to roads, buildings, stables, and a lake.
Most famous was Linden Towers, built by “Silver King” James Flood, who made his mint in the Comstock Lode. Called “Flood’s wedding cake,” the showy mansion stood for more than 50 years, before being torn down in 1934 to make way for the subdivision of Lindenwood, where lights, statues, pots and fountains still recall its past glory.
Possibly the most entertaining of the great estates belonged to San Francisco cable car magnate Andrew Hallidie in what is now Portola Valley. Mr. Hallidie, who built mining equipment, erected an aerial cable system, like a ski lift, which ran more than a mile up the hill from near where Christ Church stands now.
Next 50 years: two World Wars, Depression, suburbs
San Mateo County celebrated its 50th anniversary with an earthquake.That earthquake, which did far less damage in the county than in San Francisco, brought a flood of refugees to San Mateo County; not all of them returned.
Then World War I brought some 43,000 soldiers to Camp Fremont in Menlo Park. Local families were much involved in serving the troops and supporting the war effort.
All that’s left is a flagpole at Fremont Park, the veterans’ hospital on Willow Road, and the original YWCA hostess center, designed by famed architect Julia Morgan, now moved to Palo Alto and remodeled as the MacArthur Park restaurant.
By the 1920s, roads improved, streetcar lines served north county, more and more people had automobiles. Veterans returned from World War I wanting a better life; homes in the suburbs came within reach of the rising middle class. “This started a new sort of suburban experience,” says Mr. Postel.
This new middle class also began building vacation homes in the woods of the south county with names like Woodside Glens, Los Trancos Woods, and Stanford Weekend Acres — communities that have gone upscale as summer cottages expanded to meet the aspirations of today’s families. “There was lots of cheap housing around then,” says Ms. Spangler.
The 1920s also brought Prohibition, which spawned lots of stills, speakeasies, and revenooers in the county.
Then the Depression hit. “San Mateo County did very well during the Depression era,” Ms. Spangler says. Federal money helped build El Camino Real, Bayshore Freeway, and the port in Redwood City. “That was a real boost to the county economy.”
Money from the PWA (Public Works Administration) was used to attach a three-story annex to the front portico of the 1908 domed courthouse. That ungainly annex is finally being removed, and the original portico restored. The “Temple of Justice,” which now houses the San Mateo County History Museum, will reopen with a new plaza sometime this fall.
Between the wars, government entities expanded to serve the new population. Atherton incorporated in 1923 to keep out the small lots and working folk from the village of Menlo Park. Menlo Park incorporated in 1927.
With the Board of Supervisors plagued with corruption, and supervisors trading favors, San Mateo County adopted a new reform charter in 1932. Key to the reform was election of supervisors at large, rather than by district. Even now, all voters in the county get to vote for each supervisor. “District election disenfranchised people. That’s the strength of this system,” Ms. Spangler says.
During the 1930s, San Mateo County also built up the schools, skills, and businesses that took off during and after World War II, and set the stage for the postwar boom.
The war brought industry to the county, including electronics, shipbuilding in South San Francisco, and the development of the San Francisco Airport, Mr. Postel says. “By 1956, much of the infrastructure was in place: highways, airport, roads, hospitals, schools, water.”
Third 50 years: boom times; green movement
People here today remember the surge of growth on the Peninsula as veterans of World War II came back to get a free education under the GI Bill and build their dream houses.Along with the building boom came the high-tech boom of computers, the Internet, and venture capital, all fed by county scientists and organizations. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center has probed the secrets of matter and generated several Nobel Prizes. The local office of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park has become Earthquake Central for California. SRI International, Raychem and others have moved science forward and made new-age gadgets. From South San Francisco, Genentech is leading the revolution in biotechnology.
People like Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, Steve Jobs, Gordon Moore and Larry Ellison have also helped shape our futures.
The county’s growth spurt also posed new problems for government, as numerous public agencies struggle to provide roads, freeways, cops, schools and services to new communities and residents. San Mateo County’s budget went from $5 million in 1945 — astronomical at the time — to $1.6 billion this year.
New cities formed to control their own destiny. Woodside in 1956, and Portola Valley in 1964, incorporated to stay rural and keep the developers at bay. Now San Mateo County has 20 cities, plus numerous independent school districts and special purpose districts.
But around 1960 something started changing; people started questioning the mantras of growth — more filling of San Francisco Bay for development; industry in the Peninsula foothills; or new freeways across the county and along the Bayfront and coast. The environmental movement took root here.
Grass-roots groups around the Bay — and across the country — have blocked projects, passed laws, stopped freeways, cleaned air and water, and saved land for the future.
In San Mateo County, one new freeway, Interstate 280, has been built; three were taken off the maps, thanks to public pressure: the Willow Freeway across the Bay and through Menlo Park; the Bayfront Freeway off the shore; and the Coast Freeway.
With former Portola Valley Mayor Eleanor Boushey in charge, the county’s Scenic Roads Committee persuaded the state to declare Skyline Boulevard a scenic highway. “We set design standards for Skyline,” says Ms. Spangler, who served on that committee.
The only new freeway, I-280, is also a scenic highway. A major political fight, led by Sid Liebes of Atherton, resulted in the new freeway running up hill from the Crystal Springs lakes and securing 23,000 acres of the San Francisco Watershed as permanent open space under a federal easement.
Most important in preserving open lands in San Mateo County was establishing the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in 1972 and the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) in 1977. These agencies — one a government agency, the other a private nonprofit trust — have changed the land-use debate in the county. Instead of fighting battles to stop one project or another, they raise money and buy key lands.
So far, they have preserved more than 50,000 acres of open lands in the county for open space, recreation, farming, grazing, park, habitat or other open space uses.
In his state of the county speech to the annual Progress Seminar in Monterey last April, Jerry Hill, president of the county Board of Supervisors, reviewed the last 150 years in the county. “We have promises to fulfill,” he said. “It is up to us. It is our responsibility. Can we leave the gem of a legacy for the next 150 years?”
Frank Skillman’s 1955 prophecy
The late Franks Skillman, a resident of Ladera and planning director for San Mateo County when it produced its first master plan in 1960, wrote these prophetic words in 1955.Alarming things are happening in San Mateo County. The once sleepy Peninsula, home of the Ralstons and the Floods, is now bustling with “Progress” and progress can be a terrible thing!
It can mean the “floating” of tract houses on marsh lands, where industry might be more valuable to our economy.
It can mean the desecration of our natural environment of beauty in our hills and valleys and the replacement by “Goliathan” steps of row houses — a “Terracide” symphony of monotony.
It can mean the uprooting of the artichoke from the earth’s richest soil and the planting thereon of the roof and macadam of the subdivision.
It can mean burning dumps, auto graveyards, unsightly roadside development, cities rotting at the core — victims of the “motor age.”
It can mean highways so spilling over with traffic that they are no longer avenues of adventure but raceways of torture and fear.
Yes, all these in the name of Progress! Must it be so?
The prediction is that San Mateo County population will double by 1990. That can mean but one thing — more progress!
Note: Mr. Skillman was pretty close. San Mateo County’s population was about 340,000 in 1955; in 1990, it was 650,000 — not quite double. Now it’s 725,000, and growing.
These words were republished in the most recent edition (Vol. 35, No. 1) of La Peninsula, an occasional publication of the San Mateo County Historical Association that is free to members and sold for $6 at the San Mateo County History Museum store.
