Living in Burlingame

Burlingame earned the nickname City of Trees honestly. The town has protected its canopy since a tree ordinance passed in 1908, the same year it became a city, and today more than 11,000 street trees shade its blocks. The towering eucalyptus and elm rows along El Camino Real were planted in the 1870s and are on the National Register of Historic Places.

What makes Burlingame special day to day is how much is within reach. You can walk to coffee and dinner, catch Caltrain from a historic depot, and be at SFO in minutes. Two separate shopping districts, Burlingame Avenue and Broadway, give each side of town its own main street.

Long before the railroad, Ohlone villages dotted this stretch of the Peninsula. Under Mexican rule the land was split between Rancho Buri Buri to the north and Rancho San Mateo to the south. In 1868 banker William Ralston named his holdings here for Anson Burlingame, the American diplomat to China.

The Burlingame Country Club formed in 1893 and the train depot opened a year later. The first residential subdivision followed in 1896, and after the 1906 earthquake San Franciscans arrived in large numbers. Burlingame incorporated in 1908, passed its tree protection ordinance that same year, and annexed the Town of Easton in 1910. The city has been named a Tree City USA every year since 1980.