Woodside village and the Woodside Store

Woodside's village center is easy to miss. Drive west on Woodside Road from Interstate 280 and within a minute you pass a handful of low buildings, a market, two well-known restaurants and Town Hall. Then you are back among oaks and redwoods. That is the point. The town incorporated in 1956 to keep this corner of the hills rural. It has stayed that way.

Our Woodside and Atherton guide covers the whole town. This page is about the village center and the Woodside Store, the 1854 country store up the road that is now a county museum. It also covers the thing visitors most often get wrong here: sharing the road with horses.

The village center

The center is a short stretch of Woodside Road between the freeway and Cañada Road, around the junction with Whiskey Hill Road. You can walk all of it in ten minutes. The buildings are low and mostly wooden, set among parking lots and trees.

• Town Hall at 2955 Woodside Road handles planning, permits and town meetings.
• Woodside Community Museum next door at 2961 Woodside Road has exhibits on local history.
• Independence Hall, a restored 1884 building, stands beside Town Hall.
• Roberts Market, the town's grocery, lists an address of 3015 Woodside Road on its website.
• Buck's of Woodside and The Village Pub face each other across a few hundred feet of road.

One familiar name has moved. Woodside Bakery & Cafe, family owned since 1981, now lists its address at Sharon Heights Shopping Center in Menlo Park. Our Sharon Heights guide covers that center.

A plan for the center

The town is updating its Town Center Area Plan, which guides land use, parking, housing and circulation for pedestrians, cyclists, riders and cars in the village. The town's project page says the work began in spring 2025. A draft plan and environmental review are scheduled from August 2026 to January 2027. Residents can follow meetings and comment through the town's website.

The Woodside Store

The Woodside Store at 3300 Tripp Road, at the corner of Kings Mountain Road, is what the San Mateo County Historical Association calls the Peninsula's original country store. It sits among trees a short drive west of the village center.

Its history

The store you see was built in 1854 by Robert Orville Tripp and Mathias Parkhurst, after an earlier store on the site burned. Tripp was a dentist from Massachusetts who came west in the Gold Rush. The store stood in the middle of the Peninsula's logging district. The county's Huddart Park history says about 15 sawmills operated within five miles of its door during the boom. It sold food, tools and building supplies and served as post office, bank, saloon and dentist's office. Parkhurst died in 1863. Tripp kept the store until his death in 1909 at 93.

San Mateo County acquired the store in 1940 and opened it as a museum in 1947. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and is California Historical Landmark No. 93. The San Mateo County Historical Association restored it to its look in the 1880s.

Visiting

The association's website lists the store open on Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Weekday mornings may bring school groups: the association runs a hands-on program there for third and fourth graders on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in which students fill orders, cut a redwood shingle with a two-person saw and do laundry the old way. Weekend afternoons are quieter for families. Check historysmc.org for current hours and any admission details.

The shelves hold goods of the 1880s, from canned fruit and frying pans to nails and sewing machines. Ask about the store's role in the lumber trade, which explains why a general store stood so far up the hill. The same association runs the History Museum in Redwood City. Our downtown Redwood City guide covers it.

Where to eat

Buck's of Woodside

Buck's website says Jamis MacNiven opened it in 1991 because he could not find a good place to eat in Woodside. MacNiven was a builder before he became a restaurateur. He filled the dining room with oddities: a Soviet space suit, a Shaquille O'Neal shoe and high-tech soapbox derby cars. Buck's lists breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, with reservations and online ordering. Its booths have a long place in Silicon Valley lore as a spot for breakfast meetings between founders and investors. Our where founders meet guide covers the places that play that role in Palo Alto today.

The Village Pub

The Village Pub at 2967 Woodside Road opened in 2001. Its website says it has held one Michelin star every year since 2009 and that its wine list of more than 3,500 labels has won Wine Spectator's Grand Award every year since 2016. It lists dinner from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and lunch on Fridays. Our fine dining guide compares it with other starred restaurants nearby.

Picnic supplies

Roberts Market is the place to pick up sandwiches and drinks before heading up to Huddart Park or Wunderlich Park.

Horses on the roads

Woodside is horse country. Many residents keep horses, stables such as the Folger Stable at Wunderlich Park board them and the town maintains a network of riding trails that run beside and across roads. You will see riders on Woodside Road, Kings Mountain Road, Cañada Road and the side streets, often in small groups.

Horses can spook at sudden noise or movement. A frightened horse can throw its rider into traffic. A few habits keep everyone safe:

1. Slow down early when you see a rider ahead, especially on blind curves.
2. Pass wide and slow, with no engine revving. Wait if the road is too narrow.
3. Never honk near a horse.
4. On a bike, call out a greeting before you pass from behind so the rider knows you are there. A voice tells the horse you are a person.
5. On foot on a shared trail, step to the downhill side and let the horse go by.

Weekend mornings bring hundreds of road cyclists too, especially on Cañada Road and Kings Mountain Road. Our biking guide covers the classic loops and etiquette.

Nearby

• Filoli: The 1917 house and gardens along Cañada Road, in unincorporated San Mateo County near Woodside. See our Filoli guide.
• Huddart Park: Redwood canyons up Kings Mountain Road, past the Woodside Store.
• Wunderlich Park: A county park on Woodside Road with the restored Folger Stable and its Carriage Room museum.
• Portola Valley: The next town south, with the Portola Valley Town Center and Windy Hill.

Events

Woodside's calendar is small and community-run. In fall 2026 the town's Environment and Open Space Committee announced an autumn event on Sunday, November 15 at 2 p.m., with doors at 1:30 p.m., on building owl boxes to attract owls to your property. The town lists The Horse Park at Woodside and the Kings Mountain Art Fair among things to do. Check each organizer's site for dates. The county also runs volunteer days at Huddart and Wunderlich parks, including a broom pull at Wunderlich on November 28, 2026.

Getting there from Palo Alto

Drive north on Interstate 280 to the Woodside Road exit and head west, or take Sand Hill Road to Portola Road and turn north. Either way takes about 20 minutes. There is no useful public transit. The village has small parking lots behind most businesses. For the Woodside Store, continue west on Woodside Road and turn onto Kings Mountain Road. Visitors without a car can browse Bay Area day tours or plan on a rideshare, though return rides from the hills can be slow to find.

Frequently asked questions