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Most who live or have spent considerable time in the south mid-Peninsula are familiar with Middlefield Road. This venerable thoroughfare has some history. Let’s take a closer look:
Before 1852, it was part of the main San Francisco-San Jose highway, which, between Five Points in Redwood City and Mountain View, was called the “Camino de en Medio.” In late 1851, what was initially known as Steinberger’s fence was built along the northeast side of the road in present-day Atherton and Menlo Park. In 1852, the county road, later named El Camino Real, was opened, resulting in the bay marsh being enclosed into one large tract and the fence accordingly (by 1853) called the Middle Field fence. The name was thereafter sometimes transferred to the road and the road was officially so designated by an act of the state Legislature in 1878.
In the early and middle 1850s, that part of Middlefield between present Eighth Avenue and Marsh Road was called the “Rancho Road,” possibly because it followed the old Spanish route, while the rest of the road had been slightly straightened by purchasers of portions of the old Pulgas rancho.
Until the late 1930s, Semicircular Road and Fifth Avenue west of the railroad were still often called “Old Middlefield Road.” Middlefield Road, north of North Fair Oaks, was opened in the 1880s. In Palo Alto, the present road is even newer.
In Mountain View, a small offshoot of Middlefield Road remains, called “Old Middlefield Way.” It runs off Middlefield Road just south of San Antonio Road.
South of San Antonio Road, it’s called “West Middlefield Road” and is west of Highway 101. On the other side, it’s called “East Middlefield Road.”
In Redwood City, the original name of Middlefield was 2nd Street, when Redwood City was initially known as Mezesville.
Everything else is just history…
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