San Bruno is a working-class suburb on the western edge of San Francisco Bay, jammed between San Francisco International Airport and the wooded ridges of San Bruno Mountain. Few visitors come here on purpose — most pass through changing planes or stopping at the BART station — but the city is more interesting than its strip-mall first impression suggests.
This was the site of Tanforan Racetrack, one of the most famous horse-racing venues on the West Coast for sixty years, and later a Japanese-American internment assembly centre where families were held in former horse stalls in 1942 before being shipped to camps further inland. The shopping mall that replaced the track now carries a sober memorial to that history. The Golden Gate National Cemetery on the north side of town is one of the largest military cemeteries in the United States, with 140,000 graves in geometric rows.
For walkers, Junipero Serra County Park climbs into the coastal hills with trails through oak woodland and grassland, with views back across the bay to the runways. The National Archives at the Leo J. Ryan Federal Building hold a major Pacific Region collection — particularly strong on Chinese immigration records from the Angel Island era — and are open to researchers.
San Bruno makes a practical stopover if your flight is at SFO: hotels are cheaper than downtown San Francisco, BART and Caltrain both reach the city in twenty minutes, and the Pacific is twenty minutes' drive over the ridge to Pacifica.