History

Homeview is where Belmont’s history begins. Within its borders is the original site of “Angelo’s Corners,” where Charles Angelo built his general store/inn/ way station for travelers between San Francisco and San Jose. Angelo’s business operated under several names during Belmont’s early years – “Flashner’s Corners,” the “Pulgas Ranch Hotel” and the “Bull’s Head.”

Belmont (and Homeview) developed slowly, despite the best efforts of S.M. Mezes, the attorney hired to determine the fate of Don Luis Antonio Arguello’s 35,000-acre Spanish land grant, Rancho de las Pulgas. Arguello, at one time the acting Mexican governor of California, died in 1830. He left the ranch to his widow, Marie but squatters soon overran the land, clouding its ownership. Mezes saved the ranch for Marie, then took 15 percent of its land as his fee. Mezes platted Redwood City on his land in 1851 (and tried to name it “Mezesville”) but lived in Belmont and was an early booster for the barely populated town.

It wasn’t until the early 1900s that Homeview was first subdivided for residential development. 60 acres of Newhall Hill, named for either Henry or William Newhall (prominent landowners in Hillsborough and San Mateo), was broken up in 1908. The plat was divided into building lots in 1923 and called the “Jewell Tract.”

Optimism reigned, producing, among other things, a dog racing track located just east of the railroad tracks and a haphazard collection of shacks at the edge of Steinberger Slough, where early Belmonters learned to swim.

Hopes for quick growth collapsed, however, with the onset of the Great Depression. Interviewed for “Heritage of Wooded Hills,” an oral history of Belmont, one resident remembers “hobo camps” at the corner of Old County Road and Harbor Boulevard, along with sheep grazing on “Belmont Mountain,” a small rise near what is now Quarry Road, and colorful gardens along Furlong Street. Sadly, with the onset of World War II, the gardens’ Japanese owners were sent to internment camps. During the war, a U.S. Army camp sat where Nesbit Elementary School now stands.

Homeview’s growth as a residential neighborhood took shape after the war. Gardens, military housing, roadside general stores and scattered farms gave way to orderly tract housing. Shantytown was removed, its site eventually becoming part of Redwood Shores. Homeview became Belmont’s affordable neighborhood, which it remains today.