Menlo Park

Not to be confused with lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison’s New Jersey hometown, this bedroom community centers on a small downtown strip of restaurants and shops on Santa Cruz Avenue. Menlo Park’s global profile received an enormous boost in 2015 when Facebook (now Meta) opened its headquarters at the edge of the city (with the help of legendary architect Frank Gehry). The campus is actually not close to Downtown Menlo Park, but the residual effect can certainly be felt in the real estate prices and enormous amount of construction closer to town. Sand Hill Road lies along the edge of the city with Stanford’s campus and Palo Alto, and its name is synonymous with the powerful venture capitalist firms that call it home. Woodside is Menlo Park’s mostly pastoral northern home, where there are a couple excellent destination-worthy restaurants and the lavish Filoli Estate’s mansion and gardens.