The Phleger Estate is a park in San Mateo County, California, United States. The park is located outside the town of Woodside and adjacent to Huddart County Park. The park was acquired in 1991 by the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) for $25 million and is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA).
History
When the Spanish arrived on the San Francisco Peninsula in 1769, the land from Belmont south to Redwood City, and from the Bay into the foothills including Woodside, Huddart Park and the Phleger Estate was occupied by the Lamchin local tribe of the Ohlone people. This tribe was encountered by the Portolà expedition as it descended from Sweeney Ridge to San Francisquito Creek through what Portola called the Cañada de San Francisco (now traversed by Cañada Road). The padres spoke of the Lamchin as possessing four villages, Cachanigtac, Guloisnistac, Oromstac and Supichon, but moved them to Mission San Francisco de Asís between 1784 and 1793 for Christianization.
After secularization of the California missions, Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted the which now includes the Phleger Estate to John Coppinger in 1841. Coppinger was a British seaman who deserted his ship in San Francisco in 1835 but he went on to support Governor Alvarado's revolt against the Mexico-installed Governor Gutiérrez in Monterey in 1836. When Coppinger died in 1847, his widow Maria Luisa Soto Coppinger married another Irish seaman, Captain John Greer, who sold off timber rights on the Rancho and is notable for laying out Cañada Road in 1862.
The area Redwoods were an important source of lumber exports. According to Mexican government records of 1841, 100,000 board feet of wood were ready at the embarcadero near Mission Santa Clara for export to the Hawaiian Islands, presumably the source of this timber was Coppinger's Rancho. The wooded area was a refuge for American, English, Scots and Irish expatriates who cut timber and distilled alcohol for sale. The California Gold Rush, beginning in 1848 catalyzed logging operations to support the explosive growth of the city of San Francisco. By the 1860s most of the logger's mills had moved west over the Skyline, having depleted the eastern slope of trees.
Willard Whipple was one of many area lumbermen who dragged logs to the port at Redwood City. His Whipple's Mill Road has come to be known as Whipple Avenue. He was a Union sympathizer in the Civil War and named the creek on which his mills operated West Union Creek. Whipple built his steam-powered Upper Mill in late 1852 at the site of today's Phleger House (now occupied by Gordon and Betty Moore) on the Phleger Estate.
About 1908, William Bourn completely acquired the Spring Valley Water Company, which closed its lands (which included the Phleger Estate, Bourn's estate "Filoli" and today's Crystal Springs Reservoirs) to agriculture, logging and vineyards. The two Crystal Springs lakes and San Andreas Lake used to be known as Spring Valley Lakes for the Spring Valley Water Company which took its name with it from its original location at the Spring Valley was between Mason and Taylor Streets, and Washington and Broadway Streets in San Francisco, where the water company started. When the company went south for more water, the Spring Valley name was carried south too. In 1915, Bourn hired Willis Polk to build Filoli, and moved in in 1917.
Just before Bourn sold the Spring Valley Water Company to the city of San Francisco, he allowed a Company Vice President, Samuel P. Eastman, to create his own estate, "Mountain Meadow", just south of Filoli. Eastman contracted Gardner Dailey, who had just left the Willis Polk architectural firm, to design his estate home, which was completed in 1927. The 8,000-square foot house, with a tiled mission revival style roof, was situated to permit views of both the second-growth redwoods and oak woodlands. In 1937, Herman and Mary Elena Phleger (née Macondray) began acquiring this watershed property, that they referred to as "the home place" ultimately assembling an estate of . Their nearest neighbors were the Roth family, the new owners of Filoli, a mile to the north.