The pioneering of San Bruno

Every town has its unique history and San Bruno is no exception. The Spanish/Mexicans used the area of San Bruno for grazing cattle and horses from the mid-1700s until the Mission period in the mid-1800s.

Its unique geology with the hills to the west between the Pacific Ocean and the flat terrain along the San Francisco Bay made it a natural corral in which to let the cattle wander, eat and reproduce to produce more cattle. Jose Antonio Sanchez’s Mexican grant of Rancho Buri Buri in the 1830s defined the area a little more, but his attempt to put the Rancho on a sound economic base was cut short by his death in 1843. His heirs thought differently about raising cattle and proceeded to sell the land to speculators and the rising class of European-Americans who settle here. The geography of San Bruno 14 miles to the south of San Francisco’s Mission Dolores and 40 miles north of the Mission by San Jose did not encourage many settlers to stop and build homes until the American period in the 1840s. Only then was a roadhouse, the 14-Mile House (later named Uncle Tom’s Cabin) constructed along a deep creek that was a huge obstacle to travel. In the early 1860s, another roadhouse developed, the San Bruno House, along the San Bruno Toll Road (San Mateo Avenue) that was built in 1859. Richard Cunningham, the owner, also anticipated the construction of the latest form of rapid transit that was to be built down the Peninsula — the railroad. The San Bruno House attracted many sportsmen and visitors for weekend trap-shooting, horse races and relaxation, but the visitors did not stay to develop a community. By the end of the 1880s, another restaurant/hotel facility was erected — August Jenevein’s Junction House. Ten years later, the Tanforan race track was built north of these roadhouses. The founder of the Bank of California, Darius Ogden Mills, had by now acquired thousands of acres of the Rancho Buri Buri land and he built a great estate in the now Millbrae/Burlingame area. He developed a dairy farm (east of Mills-Peninsula Medica Center) and later rented land for the construction of San Francisco Internatioanl Airport. To the north of “San Bruno” land was utilized by the Sneath family and C. Silva for cattle and horse raising. A “core” area of San Bruno was yet to be developed.