A white saltbox farmhouse standing alone in a pasture south of town, the Johnston House was built in 1853 by James Johnston, one of the earliest American settlers in the Half Moon Bay area. The New England saltbox form — two storeys at the front sloping to a single storey at the back — is the only one of its kind on the California coast and is a visible reminder that the first wave of Anglo settlers here came around the Horn from the East rather than over the Rockies.
The house was abandoned for decades, restored in the 1980s and 90s by a local volunteer group, and is open to the public only on the third Saturday of each month from 11am to 3pm. Outside of those hours you can still walk the field and view the exterior, which is the more striking experience anyway — the house in its open field, the coast visible behind, looks more like 1850s New England than 21st-century California.