Stanford Weekend Acres

Stanford Weekend Acres is an exclusively residential, woodsy area nestled up in the foothills backing Stanford University. For the perspective resident, the neighborhood offers the usual attractive suburban aesthetics that are so prevalent within the city. However, it is also one of the smallest, spanning 0.1 square miles with only a population of about 250. As a result, the district is rarely visited, , or even known, amongst the general Menlo Park community.

Stanford Weekend Acres residential terrain is firmly gripped in the upper middle-class. Homes are rather large and somewhat fancy (usually two-stories in size). Most of these luxury residences have a very inviting aesthetic appeal with room for sizable, manicured lawns and bushes lining the long winding streets. Most of these roads are almost like trails with homes hidden beneath the dense shrubbery. Its larger, more elaborate homes are concentrated around Sneckner Court. These come with quite the hefty price tag (the median household income is an estimated $1.5 million). Yet, many of these residents have the means to afford such luxury living. In fact, median household income is a meaty $210,000/year, almost double the average city’s household income.

While huddled below Stanford University’s golf course, it is one of the most reclusive neighborhoods in the city. To get there, you must travel along Alpine Road and seek the couple streets that trail off towards the campus. If you keep heading down Alpine Road, you can reach Highway 280, which conveniently connects commuters up and down the San Francisco peninsula. Also, Stanford Weekend Acres is located within the eastern reaches of the Slac National Accelerator Laboratory. The laboratory is part of the greater Stanford University and is one of the leaders in high-energy physics and radiation research (uh oh?).

If you thought the Stanford Hills neighborhood was a real hideaway neighborhood, then this is one step above that, both literally and figuratively. To get to this neighborhood you actually go further up Alpine Road after you pass Stanford Hills. Stanford Weekend Acres is actually just a handful of streets that slip off of Alpine as you get up here. Like Stanford Hills, you have the buildings from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center on the western end and rolling greens of the Stanford Golf Course on the eastern end.

But that makes it sound less remote than it actually is. You actually are on the edge of undeveloped hills just to the south and this area definitely has a sort of rural feel to it. There is actually a pretty good hiking trail up here: the Stanford Dish Hiking Trail that—as the name indicates--takes you up to the big satellite dish they have up in the hills and then curls you back around the other side. It is a good hike and there is not a lot of tree cover on it so avoid it in the middle of the summer.

If Alpine Road didn’t work as a short cut to the Highway 280 there would be little to bring traffic up here, but because it does, many West Menlo Park denizens use it in their daily commutes. As it is, Alpine is not really friendly for pedestrians since people think of it almost as an extension of the freeway and zip by on it like bats out of hell.

Once you get off this main drag you find a group of streets with fairly divergent styles. There is Sneckner Court where you get a fair amount of newer construction. You will find a large English Manor on this street with a three car garage, dormer windows and those ground floor balconies that you seem only to see in movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels.

This is in many ways a fairly typical street for the Menlo Park/Palo Alto area. You just sense the amount of wealth in the area in everything from the luxury vehicles and manicured lawns to the carefully planned street design. On Sneckner there is also a little yard on one end where rows of bushes (grape trees?) are planted. I am not sure if this is owned by one of the surrounding houses that has an amateur interest in growing grapes, but it gives the whole place (along with the similarly styled homes) a Mediterranean feel.

Bishop and Homer Lanes however, have a much different feel from Sneckner. These really do have the feel of country lanes. They are narrow and leafy and homes are walled in by weathered wooden fences. You really feel very sheltered and the homes look older and like they were once actually occupied by rural types. I doubt they still are, but the quaint feel is sure to be a draw.

Actually, it is the kind of place where I would love to live—right at the edge of civilization, but far enough away where you feel away from it all. Really nice.