Get to Know Portola Valley

Though Portola Valley is arguably a suburb by its proximity to San Francisco, it is decidedly rural in character. Other than the Ladera Shopping Center, a market, and a feed store, there isn’t much commerce besides Rossotti’s Alpine Inn (“Zott’s” to locals), a storied watering hole in continuous operation since 1852. The rest of town is divvied up among large-lot homes, horse ranches, vineyards, and nature preserves. As for everything else, you’ll find it minutes away in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, or Los Altos. Named for Gaspar de Portolá, the community slowly transitioned from a dusty logging camp called Searsville to a fashionable country home destination for San Franciscans. Today, Portola Valley serves as a pastoral enclave in the heart of Silicon Valley. In 1976, researchers sent a message via TCP/IP from Zott’s to a van in the parking lot, making it the site of the first internet transmission, burnishing the town’s tech credentials.

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Living on the San Francisco Peninsula

Except for its northern tip, which is occupied by the city itself, the San Francisco Peninsula lies almost entirely within San Mateo County — the second-most populous in the Bay Area, after San Francisco County. By sharing the only land border with San Francisco, the towns and villages of the Peninsula form a literal and figurative mainline to the city. Beginning with the railroad’s arrival in the 1860s, the towns along the Bayshore side of the Peninsula developed into San Francisco’s first commuter suburbs, and they’ve only grown since. They’re separated from the coast by the rugged, redwood-flanked slopes of the Coast Range, which effectively split the Peninsula — and county — into two distinct moods. The towns along Highway 1 move to a slower beat, from rustic Pescadero to the gnarly breaks of Half Moon Bay, home to the world-famous Mavericks big wave surfing competition.