“Rustic little Woodside, the deep Peninsula community that voted to become citified so that it could remain countrified, officially became the Town of Woodside at 10:03 a.m. yesterday.
“At that moment, in the flower bedecked garage of the Woodside Fire Department, the telephone rang.
“Miss Jane Hicks, a pretty, gray-haired woman who later became the temporary town clerk, smiled jubilantly as the County Clerk’s office informed her that the Town of Woodside had been born.”
Reporter Tim Adams of the San Francisco Examiner opened his story on the nascent town’s first council meeting with those words on November 17, 1956.
As the town of Woodside reaches the half-century mark next week, one might well say that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The concerns that galvanized residents to incorporate as a town and gain a measure of control over Woodside’s destiny are still among the issues that concern Woodsiders today:
Maintaining its distinct, rural atmosphere amid the pressures of development and population growth. Keeping the country feel by resisting the urge to install sidewalks, streetlights or — heaven forbid — a stoplight at the intersection of Woodside and Canada roads. Preserving the horse trails, dealing with sewer problems, and regulating truck traffic.
In fact, at its very first meeting, the Woodside Town Council fielded a request from the Greersburg School to widen a walking path used by students on the south side of Woodside Road between the school and Canada Road. The council fielded a similar request from the Woodside Elementary School District (formerly known as Greersburg) earlier this year.
Prior to Nov. 16, 1956, Woodside existed as an unincorporated area under the jurisdiction of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.
“If it hadn’t been for incorporation, I think Woodside would be a real mess right now,” says Trish Hooper.
Ms. Hooper was part of a cadre of women — housewives, in the dismissive parlance of 1950s newspaper reporters — who led the fight to incorporate Woodside in 1956. Knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, circulating fliers and holding campaign meetings in the old Woodside store building, they set out to create a town.
“The men were all working, so the women gave their days to driving around and pushing the recalcitrant into the right field,” Ms. Hooper says. “There were some men involved, but it was primarily women.”
Although hardly anyone objected to the goal of keeping Woodside rural, residential and un-Redwood City-ish, the idea of incorporating and becoming a town was not overwhelmingly embraced by residents.
“I think the general feeling was exactly contrary to what we were trying to put over, that if the town incorporated, it would become a big suburbia,” Ms. Hooper says. “A lot of people didn’t understand that we were incorporating to do exactly the opposite.”
She says that an ill-fated subdivision on unstable land on Summit Springs Road galvanized many Woodside residents into action and convinced them that a local government was necessary to protect the area.
“We wanted to keep the western hills from being badly subdivided and sliding downhill, (but) a lot of people felt it was just more government meddling,” Ms. Hooper says. “They were not willing to see that if the county had jurisdiction over Woodside, they would do whatever they wished.”
The result was a divisive battle that culminated in a narrow victory for incorporation proponents, who carried the day by 646 votes to 574. When the election’s results were certified, Woodside officially became San Mateo County’s 14th municipality.
“It was very polarizing for the town,” recalls Trudi Talbot, who moved to Woodside with her husband in 1947, where they built a house on Mountain Home Road. “I had people who were my friends who, because I was working and voting for Woodside’s (incorporation), chose to ignore me and stopped the friendship. People took it very personally.”
At the time, she was a doctor’s wife and the busy mother of four children, Ms. Talbot says.
“I know the reasons we wanted (incorporation) was to call our own shots, have our own mayor and use our own tax money,” she says. “Those of us working for it were working primarily so we would have control over our own destiny. I couldn’t tell you why some people didn’t want it except that it would raise taxes and we would have to take care of our own roads.”
With a laugh, she calls the incorporation proponents “ingenues” who had no idea how big of a challenge they were taking on, but boldly went “where angels fear to tread.”
“There were a lot of different kinds of people in town, but there were enough who truly cared about the future,” Ms. Talbot says. “They could just see the handwriting on the wall, we all could, and we thought we should get busy and do something. We had good advice and good help, and it worked.”
Few people are aware that a previous effort to incorporate Woodside failed, says Thalia Lubin, a member of the Woodside History Committee. A treasure trove of newspaper clippings acquired by the committee revealed a story about the failed attempt in the Aug. 16, 1928, issue of the Redwood City Standard, she says.
“We had no idea,” Ms. Lubin says. “No one remembered it.”
Another important document available at the museum: the official state document for the town of Woodside’s incorporation. Ms. Lubin points out that whatever you do, don’t call it a city.
Woodside is a town, not a city, and proud of it. There is at least one Woodside resident who is waging a Sisyphean battle to get Caltrans to change a sign on Interstate 280 that refers to the City of Woodside.
Richard Delucchi, a longtime Woodside resident whose recollections were mined for the Woodside Community Museum exhibit on the town’s incorporation, said the incorporation campaign “was a big mess.”
“I was against it at that time,” he says on a DVD about Woodside that is part of the exhibit. “I thought taxes would go up and people would start subdividing the smaller properties.”
And, 50 years later, there have been subdivisions in Woodside, though not many, and property values — and the resulting property taxes — are exponentially higher than they were in the 1950s. Of course, that’s true of all of San Mateo County’s cities, as well as its unincorporated areas.
Maintaining a Brigadoon-like state of perpetual small-town innocence is an impossibility, despite the best intentions of Woodside officials like the town’s first mayor, William Lowe, who declared, “We have only one purpose in mind, and that is to keep Woodside the way it is.”
Ms. Talbot, who was appointed to the very first Woodside Planning Commission and served for eight years, is still convinced that becoming a town was the right thing for Woodside to do.
“(Opponents) were worried that we would do something to ruin our quiet, lovely little village. Silicon Valley ruined our quiet lovely little village,” says Ms. Talbot, who moved out of Woodside in the 1970s. “When I go back, I hardly know where I am.”
Even so, it would’ve been worse if Woodside had remained unincorporated, she says.
“It’s kept a lot of its ambience,” Ms. Talbot concedes. “Everybody says, when they hear I lived in Woodside, that it’s a wonderful town.”
Now a resident of Carmel Valley, she’s witnessing another battle over incorporation in her current home.
“I hope they can do it,” she says of Carmel Valley incorporation proponents. “Carmel Valley is at the mercy of Salinas like Woodside was at the mercy of Redwood City. It was city living, which is fine, but we didn’t want that.”
The battle over incorporation set the tone for the challenges faced by that first Woodside council. In the town’s first year, it became embroiled in a controversy over limiting dirt-hauling trucks using Woodside and Canada roads, fielded complaints about drag-racing teens terrorizing Canada Road residents, and faced an uproar over the route of the new freeway — Interstate 280 — that would run through the town.
Despite the changes, Marie Wagner Krenz, whose family bought a summer house on Greer Road in 1918 and has returned there for weekends and summers ever since, rejoices that so much of Woodside’s rural community feel has been preserved.
“It’s so nice that Woodside looks so much as it always has,” Ms. Krenz says. “Across from our house we can still see the beautiful woods over where the Mounted Patrol is. There are more houses, but it’s mostly the same.”
Town celebrations for its 50th year
“If Disneyland can celebrate its 50th anniversary for a whole year, then so can Woodside,” says Town Manager Susan George.The town’s 50th birthday has been the theme of the annual May Day Parade, last month’s Day of the Horse, and an exhibit at the Community Museum. On the actual day of incorporation, Nov. 16, Woodside is holding its annual volunteer reception — but with a twist. Instead of the usual holiday party to thank members of the town’s committees and commissions, the town is inviting all Woodside volunteers, past and present, to a birthday bash in Independence Hall.
A town-wide 50th anniversary celebration that will be open to the public is tentatively set for next spring, to coincide with the opening of Woodside’s first municipal park, Barkley Field, says Ms. George.
