The Shops at Tanforan (San Bruno, California)

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1150 El Camino Real
San Bruno, California 94066
(650) 873-2000
www.theshopsattanforan.com/

The Shops at Tanforan is a shopping mall and business area in San Bruno, California, in the Peninsula area of the Bay Area, 10 miles (16 km) south of San Francisco. It is served by the adjacent San Bruno BART subway station and is served by several local SamTrans bus lines. It was reopened in October 2005 after several years of remodeling. Prior to its current role as a shopping mall, Tanforan was a racetrack, serving at various times as an airfield, military training center, internment camp, and golf course. Currently, the site is occupied by a shopping mall which features JCPenney, Sears and Target as its anchor stores.

ABOUT THE SITE:

"The land on which Tanforan Shopping Center now stands had been used for horse raising and grazing since the early days of the Spanish occupation on the Peninsula. The racetrack was financed by Prince André Poniatowski, builder of Skyfarm in Hillsborough and brother-in-law of William H. Crocker. Tanforan Racetrack opened in 1899. It was named for Toribio Tanforan the grandson-in-law of Jose Antonio Sanchez. Toribio was a vaquero (cowboy) from Chile. Though little is known about him, it is believed that he was an excellent horseman, and so his name has been linked with the area and the racetrack ever since. Tanforan Racetrack was the takeoff sight of the first flight ever on the West Coast as well as the sight of the first ever aircraft carrier takeoff and landing in 1911. The ship was the U.S.S. Pennsylvania. The most dubious legacy of the racetrack is the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Tanforan held races of all types, from horse races to races between cars and airplanes, until it burned down in 1964."


www.militarymuseum.org/CpTanforan.html --

"The Tanforan Assembly Center was located at the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, 12 miles south of San Francisco. Occupied from April 28 to October 13, the assembly center held 8,033 evacuees (with a maximum of 7,816 at a time) from the San Francisco Bay area. The assembly center had about 130 barracks, half within the racetrack infield. In addition, stables were used to house evacuees, as at Santa Anita.

"The racetrack, opened in 1899, burned down in 1964 and the area is now a shopping mall (Tanforan Mall). At the southwest entrance of the mall there is a large statue of a racehorse and jockey and a group of historical markers. One marker has a brief description of the racetrack and assembly center. Other markers commemorate the first airplane flight from a ship, the racehorse Seabiscuit, and an early developer."

www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html -- news clips about the internment of San Francisco Japanese-Americans.

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