In the mid-1870's, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors acknowleded the need to house the county's ill and indigent citizens.  The County  acquired a 140 acre parcel of ranch property in the hills west of  San Mateo/Belmont.  The San Mateo County Poor Farm & Hospital opened at this location in July of 1876.

     "Patients with diseases like tuberculosis, rheumatism, malaria, diabetes, asthma, chicken pox, heart problems etc. were treated in the hospital . . . The impoverished were housed in adjacent housing and were considered inmates . . . Record books for these facilities...starting from 1876...list all the inmates that came to the poor farm and died there . . . The Poor Farm Graveyard was first established in 1894, when the first dead were buried and their names, places of origin, age and the reason for dying were entered into a logbook . . ."  ---Adela Morris, Director, Institute for Canine Forensics

(The Institute for Canine Forensics (ICF) is a non-profit organization in Northern California for the advancement of research and education of Forensic Evidence.  One of their projects, in cooperation with the Archaeology and Anthropology Departments of the University of Santa Clara, is the San Mateo County Poor Farm Cemetery.)