San Mateo History

The Ohlone tribe lived on the Peninsula for at least 4000 years before Spanish explorers arrived in the late 1700’s. In 1776 Father Font named the creek that they slept by “San Mateo Creek” by 1849 a stagecoach stop was established in San Mateo, and the Sawyer Creek trail provided a road between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay.

The Mexican Land Grants of 1835 designated a few large ranches on the peninsula. Rancho San Mateo, which included south Burlingame, all of Hillsborough, and north San Mateo was sold for four dollars an acre in the 1850’s. The rest of San Mateo was designated Rancho de las Pulgas land.

A railway from San Francisco to San Jose took 4 years to complete in 1864 the same year the first church (Roman Catholic) in San Mateo was completed. A few years later an Episcopalian church, built from stones taken from the Crystal Springs quarry, was completed. In 1889 the Crystal Springs dam was completed, a volunteer fire department was officially organized, and part of a large estate (William Howard) opened for subdivision allowing the middle class to move to San Mateo. On September 3, 1894 San Mateo incorporated as a town.

San Mateo became the place to build summer and weekend homes and became the home for some of the most powerful people in the West.

The original San Mateo-Hayward Bridge was the longest bridge in the world when it was completed in 1929. The bridge was two-lanes with a vertical lift to allow ship traffic to pass under. 4000 feet of the original bridge remains as the Werder Fishing Pier in Foster City. Construction of the current bridge was completed in 1967 at a cost of $70 million.

Work should begin in 2018 to construct a new three lane bridge for west bound traffic. The existing bridge will serve three lanes of eastbound traffic, and the toll plaza will be widened to provide six continuous travel lanes in both directions from route 101 to I-880. There are no plans to improve the highrise portion of the bridge in the next 20 years.