From Rancho Land to Railroad Town
Long before Burlingame had a name, this stretch of the Peninsula was part of the land the Spanish missions relied on to feed their outposts in San Francisco. Members of the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition camped near a creek here in 1776, and the area later became part of Rancho San Mateo, a Mexican land grant that changed hands more than once before American settlers arrived. Everything changed in the 1860s, when banker William Ralston, flush from his stake in the Comstock Lode, began assembling a grand estate on the Peninsula. He set aside a section for summer villas and offered a piece of it to his friend Anson Burlingame, freshly appointed as United States Minister to China. Burlingame chose a site of roughly 1,000 acres for his retirement home, and the name stuck. It helped that it was already showing up in newspapers thanks to the Burlingame Treaty with China.
A Town Comes Together
By the 1890s, the community had enough momentum to formalize itself. The Burlingame Country Club opened its doors in 1893, and the town's post office followed a year later, making the name official. New residents kept arriving, especially after the 1906 earthquake sent San Franciscans looking for a quieter place to settle. A volunteer fire department formed in 1907, and by 1908 Burlingame had incorporated as its own city.
The Landmark Train Depot
One of the town's most enduring symbols is its train station, built through a partnership between Southern Pacific and the Burlingame Country Club. It opened in 1894 as the first permanent building in the country built in the Mission Revival style, complete with a square tower, a hipped roof, Moorish arch details, and roof tiles salvaged from mission ruins in San Mateo and Monterey County. The depot has aged gracefully. It earned California State Registered Landmark status in 1971 (the first train station to receive that honor) and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. A 2007 restoration modernized the platforms while preserving its period character, and today the building houses the Burlingame Hillsborough History Museum, open since 2008 with rotating exhibits on local history.
Experience Burlingame Today
That same layered history still shapes the town, from its walkable downtown to its tree lined residential streets. After exploring the depot and museum, visitors can settle in for a meal at one of Burlingame's restaurants, check into one of the hotels in Burlingame, or plan a fuller day out with our guide to things to do in Burlingame.