Living in San Mateo

Neighborhoods — The hills

Laurelwood & Sugarloaf

A hillside neighborhood organized around a park, a public college, and the bare grass hump that half the city uses as its stairmaster.

Open grassland on the ridge above San Mateo, dry gold and cut by foot trails traversing the slope, with the Bay and the far hills flattened into haze below
The trails are the point. This is the walk half the city treats as its stairmaster, and on a clear evening it reaches from the Dumbarton to the city — though most evenings it looks like this instead.

On the map

On the slope

Elevation cross section of San Mateo, west to east: the Crystal Springs watershed at 560 feet falls to San Francisco Bay at sea level in roughly four miles. San Mateo Highlands — 310 ft Laurelwood & Sugarloaf — 330 ft Baywood — 130 ft Aragon — 90 ft North Central — 38 ft Downtown — 28 ft Hillsdale — 22 ft Bay Meadows — 14 ft Sunnybrae — 11 ft Shoreview & Fiesta Gardens — 8 ft Coyote Point & North Shoreview — 5 ft
The hills On the shoulder of Sugarloaf. The Bay Drag toward the Bay →
Elevation
330 ft
Band
The hills
Nearest platform
Hillsdale
Getting to it
25–30 minutes on foot, downhill going and uphill back; about eight by e-bike
Street pattern
Cul-de-sacs off a spine road, all of them climbing
Fog
In it more than not
Tree canopy
Dense in the canyon, thin on the open slope — Sugarloaf itself is bare
Noise
Low. A distant 101 hum on some blocks; frogs in the creek after rain

Sugarloaf is the round, treeless hill visible from most of the flats, gold from May until the first rain. Laurelwood Park runs up the canyon beside it, and the trail out of the park to the summit is the closest thing San Mateo has to a civic ritual: short, steep, and on a clear evening a view from the Dumbarton Bridge to the city.

The houses below it are mostly 1950s and 60s, on generous lots, backing onto the creek in places. Above them is College of San Mateo, which sits on a shelf with a view of the whole Bay and hosts a large farmers market in its parking lot on Saturday mornings. The hours have moved before.

What it's actually like

Green in winter, gold in summer, with the creek running through the park and loud with frogs after rain. Coyotes are a fact of life, and cats stay indoors. There is more wildlife here than people expect this close to 101, because the hill connects to the open space behind it.

Traffic is the tradeoff. There are only a few ways down and they all feed the same intersections at 31st and Hillsdale. Leaving between 8 and 9 costs fifteen minutes that leaving at ten does not. There is no commercial street inside the neighborhood, so dinner is a drive.

Getting out

By car, down 31st to 101, or over to 280 by way of Polhemus.

By train, Hillsdale is twenty-five to thirty minutes down on foot and meaningfully longer back up. With a motor under you it is about eight minutes in either direction, which is the difference between a station you use on purpose and one you use when someone can collect you.

By bike, close enough to ride to the station and, under your own power, far enough that most people don't — a statement about the climb home rather than the distance. The SamTrans racks on the hill routes are the older way to make the trip one-directional, and they still work if the ride home is not the part you want.

On foot, the trailhead rather than the errand. The park, the creek, and the summit are all out the front door, and there is no commercial street inside the neighborhood at all. A walk here goes up.