Atherton, CA

Holbrook-Palmer Park is Atherton’s only municipal recreation site, so a single 22-acre property carries much of the town’s outdoor community activity. Olive Holbrook Palmer left the former family estate to Atherton for park use. Today its tree-lined walking paths, gardens, playground, ballfield, and tennis courts share the grounds with the historic Main House, Carriage House, and Jennings Pavilion, which accommodate classes, meetings, celebrations, and town events. Atherton also schedules summer concerts and films on the park’s main lawn. The park’s concentrated role reflects the town around it. Atherton stretches roughly 4.5 miles along the San Francisco Peninsula between Redwood City, Menlo Park, and Woodside, with El Camino Real running through it. The town had an estimated 6,823 residents in July 2023.

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It incorporated separately from Menlo Park in 1923 and permits only one single-family house per acre in new subdivisions, although older lots can be smaller. A town handbook notes that most streets have no sidewalks, a pattern it describes as preserving a rural appearance. The civic campus provides an important indoor counterweight. A new Atherton Library opened there in June 2022 with children’s, teen, and adult areas, outdoor reading decks, a separate reading room, and a makerspace whose Digital Lab and Memory Lab support 3D printing, laser cutting, sewing, virtual reality, photography, and media digitization. Menlo College, founded in 1927 on a 40-acre Atherton site, adds a small residential higher-education campus focused on business and psychology.