Guides — Parks

Outdoors

A watershed on one side, a bay on the other, a hill in the middle climbable before dinner.

Checked August 2026

The reason to put up with Peninsula housing costs is what surrounds the Peninsula. San Mateo is unusually well placed for it: watershed to the west, shoreline to the east, both reachable in under fifteen minutes.

West: the watershed

Sawyer Camp Trail is the county's most-used trail and deserves it — a paved six-mile route along Crystal Springs Reservoir, closed to cars, flat, shaded in stretches, with a very old bay laurel partway along it. It gets busy on weekend mornings; early or midweek is the difference.

The wider Crystal Springs Regional Trail system runs north and south from there along the reservoir chain. The water itself is closed to the public — it's San Francisco's supply, protected since the 1930s. The whole western skyline is undeveloped for that reason, and will stay that way.

Sugarloaf, up from Laurelwood Park, is the local hill: a short, steep climb through the canyon to a bare summit with a view across the Bay. About forty-five minutes round trip at a steady pace. March, with the grass green, is the best of it.

East: the shoreline

Coyote Point Recreation Area is the anchor — a eucalyptus headland with a beach, a marina, picnic groves, a well-loved playground, and CuriOdyssey, a small natural science museum with native animals that can't be returned to the wild. It is a county park, so there is a vehicle entry fee. On foot or by bike there is none.

The Bay Trail runs the length of the city's shoreline and connects onward in both directions — north toward Burlingame and the airport, south through Seal Point and Ryder Park toward Foster City. It is flat, mostly car free, and windy after lunch. Ryder Park's play structures and the levee walk next to them are the best sunset in the city.

Birds are the underrated part. The salt marsh and the ponds on the Bay edge sit on the Pacific Flyway, and the winter shorebird numbers are remarkable at a slow enough pace to notice them.

In the middle: the city parks

Central Park downtown is the civic kind of park: rose garden, tennis courts, a Japanese Garden opened in 1966 as a gift from San Mateo's sister city Toyonaka, and a miniature train that runs on weekends and is non-negotiable in the company of a four-year-old.

Beresford Park in Hillsdale has the fields and the recreation center. Smaller neighborhood parks — Los Prados, Sunnybrae, Shoreview — are the ones people use daily.

Twenty-five minutes away

Over 92, Half Moon Bay and the coast: beaches, tide pools, a harbor, and weather that is reliably ten degrees colder and grey. It is close enough to be a weeknight decision, and that fact alone justifies a lot of things about living here.