• McLaren Park
• Jerry Garcia Amphitheatre
• University Mound Reservoir
• San Bruno Avenue Corridor

Portola takes its name from the old Portola School, itself named for Gaspar de Portolà — the Spanish commander credited by many as the first European to sight San Francisco Bay during his 1769 expedition. The neighborhood's street plan was filed with the city in 1869, and the area remained largely agricultural into the early twentieth century, its eastern slopes lined with family-run greenhouses supplying much of San Francisco's flower and produce markets. Following the 1906 earthquake, Jewish and Italian families resettled the district while nurseryman families continued their trade — at its peak, more than nineteen commercial nurseries operated within the neighborhood's one square mile, earning it the enduring nickname San Francisco's Garden District.

San Bruno Avenue, long known to locals as 'The Road,' has served as the commercial spine for over a century. McLaren Park, San Francisco's second-largest park at over 300 acres, anchors the neighborhood's southwestern edge and contains the Jerry Garcia Amphitheatre, honoring the Grateful Dead guitarist who grew up in the Portola.

The Portola has worn its Garden District identity from nursery rows to victory gardens to today's community plots. MY-NHD's Portola collection is for those who know this quietly rooted corner of San Francisco's southeast.