San Mateo to observe its 125th birthday next month
San Mateo is having a birthday — and soon. The City of St. Matthew will officially turn 125 on Sept. 4.
The hamlet — named originally by the Spanish when it was a mission-route rest stop on the banks of what became San Mateo Creek in the spring of 1776 — started out small.
The 1894 vote to incorporate the town was 150 in favor, 25 opposed. The total vote probably doesn’t exceed the number of customers who visit the McDonald’s at the corner of Barneson Avenue and El Camino Real today.
When the city officially was created, it didn’t possess a public high school, a bridge east to Hayward, two massive shopping malls, a neighboring town called Foster City or Interstate 280 and Highway 101 — and lots more. Much has changed.
A number of landmark operations have come and gone, among them the race track (and airport) at Bay Meadows, the boardwalk and amusement pier at Coyote Point, the electric trolley line from San Francisco, the Benjamin Franklin Hotel (the building remains but it’s no longer a hotel), and the Borel Estate, among other significant parcels of private property.
It didn’t take two of the burgeoning burg’s adjacent communities to the north long to see the light and take action.
Burlingame and Hillsborough incorporated in 1908 and 1910, respectively. The latter was especially anxious to create its own separate fiefdom in order to protect it from being swallowed up (and taxed) by one or both of the two bigger municipal entities.
In the mid-1920s, San Mateo and Burlingame were roughly equal in population at about 10,000 residents each. World War II altered the equation dramatically.
Once the war had come to an end in 1945, San Mateo, in particular, began to grow dramatically. New subdivisions east of the old Bayshore Highway and in what is now the Hillsdale area led the way as young families with children flocked to the suburbs south of San Francisco.
By 1960, San Mateo had ballooned to 70,000 people. Today, there are 105,000. San Mateo today is more than twice as large as Burlingame and Hillsborough (the 94010 ZIP code) combined.
For more perspective, the city embraces three public high schools and one large private secondary school; all told, they educate nearly 5,500 youngsters. The elementary district, which includes schools in Foster City, has another 12,000 pupils.
The College of San Mateo student body numbers about 9,500.
San Mateo officials will conduct a series of celebrations marking the city’s 125th year on Sept. 5, 12 and 19.
Dubbed “September Nights on B Street,” the events will feature dining, drinks and dancing from 5 to 8 p.m. on B Street between Second and Third avenues.
Somehow, that location is fitting. That’s the area where the trolley line’s southern terminus was situated. By 1949, though, it had gone belly-up. Not so the city.
San Mateo is alive and kicking. It’s certainly not perfect. Housing is expensive, traffic congestion is worsening by the day, and there seems no reasonable limit on the amount of office space that can be constructed and crammed into available lots.
But why focus on the negative? It’s time for a birthday celebration. Go for it. Let the good times roll.
Rick Chandler
Rick Chandler, a Peninsula sportswriter and inveterate humorist, died Aug. 10. The cause of death was complications from a stroke. He was 64.
Among other places (and avocations), Rick, a Sequoia High School grad, wrote for Palo Alto Online and two defunct newspapers, the Peninsula Times Tribune and the San Mateo County Times. He also was an original key writer for the sports humor website Deadspin.
Rick’s work and sardonic wit were hard to top. His local stories were tightly-written, accurate, fair and timely. Rick was unique. In these parts, there was no one quite like him.