Woodside Store Historic Site: 1851 Peninsula Stop

The Woodside Store has been on this corner since 1851. It served the logging camps in the Santa Cruz Mountains — hardware, dry goods, liquor, and mail. San Mateo County Parks runs it now as a free museum and the buildings are largely unchanged.

Woodside Store exterior in late October — dark wood buildings under oak trees, fallen leaves covering the ground

The main building is all original wide-plank floors and dark wood. Shelves still hold period goods: tins, jars, dry goods arranged as they would have been. The counter and the scale are still there. There’s a person-sized stillness to it that most restorations don’t achieve.

Interior of the Woodside Store — wide plank floors, wooden counters, shelves of period goods, barrels, dim lighting

The store also served as the local post office. The cast iron postal box unit is still on the counter — U.S. brass fittings, small combination locks, maybe 40 boxes arranged in a grid. It looks like it came out of a Wells Fargo branch rather than a mountain supply store.

Original U.S. Post Office box unit at the Woodside Store — cast iron postal boxes with brass fittings, still intact

The outbuilding behind the store holds tools from the logging era: two-man crosscut saws, hand tools, barrels, a workbench. The walls are raw whitewashed boards and the ceiling is open to the rafters.

Woodside Store barn outbuilding interior — crosscut saws and tools hanging on whitewashed walls, barrels, open-rafter ceiling

The site is open Tuesday, Thursday, and weekends, noon to 4 PM, free admission. It’s about 35 minutes from SF on 280 South. There’s no real parking lot — just a dirt area by the trees.