Living in San Mateo

Neighborhoods — The hills

San Mateo Highlands

A postwar hillside tract on the far side of I-280, not technically in San Mateo at all, with open space on three sides and no shop within walking distance.

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 High on the west slope, past the freeway. The Bay Drag toward the Bay →
Elevation
310 ft
Band
The hills
Nearest platform
Hillsdale
Getting to it
2.5 miles and 300 feet — a long walk, or twelve minutes on an e-bike
Street pattern
Curved, looping, and easy to get turned around in
Fog
First in, last out
Tree canopy
Mature — planted with the tract and grown in, open space on three sides
Noise
Very low. I-280 audible along the eastern edge

The Highlands makes a trade nothing else in the city offers: no shop, no café and no groceries within walking distance of anywhere in the tract, in exchange for a hillside, deer, and real quiet. This is the band where the thing that seemed charming in April is the errand you plan around in November.

It sits up against I-280 at the city's western edge, and it is not in the city at all: this is unincorporated San Mateo County, addressed "San Mateo" and served by county sheriffs rather than city police. Residents pay attention to that distinction when trash contracts or road repaving come up, and ignore it the rest of the time.

What the confusion buys is a hillside of well-kept midcentury ranch houses laid out in long curves, a community center and pool at the middle of it, and open space on three sides. The Crystal Springs Regional Trail is a short drive or a determined walk away. So is the reservoir, which is the reason none of the land west of here will ever be developed — it is the watershed for San Francisco's drinking water, fenced off since the 1930s.

What it's actually like

Cool. Reliably several degrees cooler than downtown, and the marine layer spills over the ridge here first, so summer mornings are grey until ten or eleven when the rest of the city is already bright. Winter brings genuine wind. Sweatshirt weather is most weather.

Quiet, too, in a way that reads as peaceful or isolating depending on the temperament. Groceries, the train, and any restaurant at all are down Polhemus or Crystal Springs Road.

Getting out

By car, down the hill to 280 in three minutes, which is the real amenity — 280 to either San Francisco or Palo Alto is the freeway people take by choice, and beautiful in a way freeways usually aren't.

By train, further than it looks and closer than it sounds. Hillsdale is two and a half miles off and three hundred feet down, which is a drive and a parking space if you are on foot or on an ordinary bike. On an e-bike it is about twelve minutes each way.

By bike, the question this neighborhood turns on. Under your own power the descent is easy and the return is the three hundred feet, which is why a bike here has historically been recreation rather than transport — the Crystal Springs Regional Trail is close, and that is the ride people meant. With a motor it is the other thing entirely: the climb home is no longer the fact that decides whether you went, and the Highlands gets to use Hillsdale station the way a flat neighborhood does.

On foot, trailheads and nothing else. No corner store, no coffee shop, no groceries within walking distance of anywhere in the tract. The community center and pool are the walkable destinations, and the open space on three sides is the compensation.