Think the San Francisco Bay Area is all tech money and busy freeways? Clearly, you haven’t been getting out enough.
Just beyond the reach of the pavement-slathered cityscape exist a handful of hamlets that have, somehow, escaped the plague of modern development that’s felled their neighbors. From New Almaden to Port Costa, these six historic Bay Area towns and villages feel like they’re lost somewhere in time.
New Almaden
(Courtesy of @laforetsanjose)
Making the final turn into New Almaden, you’re hit with a bizarre sense of dislocation in time and space. The quaint historic village, once the center of operations for the country’s second largest mercury mine, bears no resemblance to the suburban San Jose sprawl around it.
Nestled against the Capitancillos Hills are the late 19th century bungalows first built by the mine’s management. While most are homes for the tight-knit community, some have been recast in more modern roles, including the former boarding house turned celebrated French restaurant La Foret, and the sprawling Casa Grande, built in 1854 by the designer of Golden Gate Park, which now houses the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum. Remnants of the workers and their labor in the cinnabar-rich hills remain, too. In Almaden Quicksilver County Park, you can hike among them on a route appropriately named the Historic Trail.
Port Costa
(Courtesy of @christina.dikas)
Port Costa, once a major grain port on the Carquinez Strait, is so charmingly anachronistic, it’s hard to believe it exists at all. Tucked behind coastal hills, the pocket-sized community has an even tinier downtown which claims vintage and antique shops and the “haunted” Burlington Hotel among its collection of late 19th century architecture.
Depending on who you ask, the town’s crowning jewel is the fantastically kitschy Warehouse, a dive bar and restaurant that hosts live music on its huge waterside patio on summer Sunday afternoons. There's also the great pre-Prohibition-style Bull Valley Roadhouse restaurant and bar; the annual town-wide yard sale; and the 1,600-acre Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline, which is a prime spot for wildflower hikes in spring. But really it's not a single thing that makes Port Costa special, it’s the way they uniquely combine in this not-yet-forgotten town.
Niles
(Courtesy of @reneetakespics)
Before Los Angeles clinched its hold on Hollywood, there was Niles, a hub for the silent film industry in the early 20th century. But all the changes wrought over the last 100 years haven’t affected the village’s feel of being lost in time.
There are more than a dozen vintage and antique shops lined up along its main street (Niles Blvd.), and a restored historic train depot at which the Niles Canyon Railway hosts scenic rides (February through October) and a holiday-themed Train of Lights (October through December). The most visible landmark of Niles’ movie era is the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, where they screen silent films (Saturday nights) and annual film festivals in the 100-seat nickelodeon theater. Saturday farmers markets and shops like the Niles Pie Company are fine bedfellows for Niles’ handful of dive bars, old-school cafes, and third-wave coffee roaster Devout.
Duncans Mills
(Courtesy of @two_wheeled_wanderer)
This little hamlet on Sonoma’s Russian River began as a lumber town in the early 1870s, and it still has that Old West feel. Among its idiosyncratic collection of false-front buildings, small indie shops (including the Poet’s Corner Book Shop and the Duncans Mills Tea Shop) rub elbows with antique and art galleries.
The Cape Fear Cafe is known for its Southern-toned eats and extensive list of badass benedicts at brunch, and locals and visitors are universally obsessed with the lovely Gold Coast Coffee & Bakery. Vintage train aficionados will get a kick out of The Depot Museum and its restored narrow-gauge railway coach but, in terms of activities, it's the coast a few miles away, which has brilliant stretches of beach and a spit where harbor seals post up in summer breeding season, that’s the perfect spot to while away an afternoon.
Alviso
(Courtesy of @apoetryofearth/@yelpsiliconvalley)
Home to the 30,000-acre Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, Alviso didn’t just keep its name when it was incorporated into the city of San Jose in the 1960s, it managed to maintain the historic character it had been cultivating since the 1850s.
Once an essential steamboat stop for San Francisco travelers, today it feels like a forgotten corner of Silicon Valley. Several of Alviso’s early buildings still stand, including the 1906 Bayside Cannery and the Tilden-Laine House; others have been left broken down and evoke a serious ghost town vibe. Rent a kayak or canoe from Laine’s Baits and Rentals for a day of birdwatching on the Bay, and don’t miss a drink at Vahl’s Restaurant & Cocktail, a dive straight out of the 1940s.
Tiburon
(Courtesy of @jeffmarples)
For a town just a short ferry ride from San Francisco, Tiburon feels surprisingly antiquated. It’s not just Historic Ark Row, the shopping center built from old boats, or the 1886 station house that now holds the Tiburon Railroad & Ferry Depot Museum, it's the entire downtown waterfront.
Now flush with wine bars, tasting rooms, and old- and new-school seafood restaurants like Sam’s Anchor Cafe and Michael Mina’s Bungalow Kitchen, it’s not a herculean stretch to picture the itsy peninsula in its railroad, shipyard, and fish cannery days. It’s also the best jumping off point for another historic site: Angel Island, a former military fort and the early 20th century’s “Ellis Island” of the West. Hop a ferry there for several miles of hiking trails, the Immigration Station museum, and campsites lit by the not-so-distant city at night.
