Founding year: the first La Honda post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
History grade
What drives La Honda’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, La Honda is more historic than 52% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of La Honda’s overall grade.
Few California towns list much on the Register (a typical California town has 0.0 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so La Honda’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (31% of California towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C− to B+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±13.7 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about La Honda’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of La Honda yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
La Honda (Spanish for "The Sling") is a census-designated place (CDP) in southern San Mateo County, California, United States. The population was 979 at the 2020 census. It is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains between the Santa Clara Valley and California's Pacific coast. La Honda is near the La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve and State Route 84 on the ocean side of the Coastal Range. The ZIP Code for La Honda is 94020 and the area code is 650. Land-line numbers in the La Honda telephone exchange follow the pattern 747-xxxx while wired telephones in and around the Middleton Tract (along Portola State Park Road) work out of the Los Altos exchange with 94x-xxxx numbers. Per the U.S. Geologi…
Its first post office opened in 1873. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population grew from 928 to 979 (+5%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
Timeline
La Honda, 1856 to 1940
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
The La Honda post office opened in 1873, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does La Honda rank for history?
La Honda is more historic than 52% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in La Honda?
33% of La Honda’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±13.7 points), against a typical 3.4% for a California town; the median home was built in 1946.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (1), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
