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The original name of this affluent community was Fair Oaks, which reflects a neighborhood in southern Redwood City today.
In the mid-1800s, Fair Oaks was a mere flag stop for the Southern Pacific Railroad between San Francisco and San Jose for the convenience of wealthy property owners in the south peninsula area.
It was part of a much larger community known as Menlo Park, initially included in the vast Rancho de las Pulgas.
In 1923, Menlo Park decided to incorporate and include the area known as Fair Oaks. Representatives of Menlo Park and Fair Oaks held a meeting. The Fair Oaks property owners decided they wanted to maintain themselves as a strictly residential community and incorporated independently.
Each group headed to Sacramento to process the appropriate paperwork for incorporation. The first to arrive was the Fair Oaks group. However, to their dismay, they discovered they could not use the name Fair Oaks because a city of the same name already existed near Sacramento.
Enter plan “B.” The group representing Fair Oaks decided to name their city after Faxon Dean Atherton, one of the area’s first wealthy property owners.
Atherton was originally from Massachusetts and purchased 600 acres of land in 1860 for $10 per acre. The location was just about where today’s Menlo Circus Club sits.
In addition to a street called Faxon Road, three of his children- Isabella, Alejandra and Elena have streets named after them. They are in close proximity to the Circus Club.
The original Fair Oaks train station was renamed Atherton in 1912. In 2005, Caltrain discontinued weekday service. Weekend service ended in 2020.
Atherton was, and remains a quiet affluent city.
Everything else is just history