"Where is your shop?" Jolly's Old-Fashioned Teas Cream says it heard that question for years before it finally had an answer. The answer is 1110 Old County Road, in a small wooden building from 1910, steps from the Belmont Caltrain Station.
That address is the center of Belmont's centennial. The city is marking 100 years as an incorporated city this year. Its two biggest October events, a guided history walk on Sunday, October 18 and the Centennial Fest on Saturday, October 24, both take place within a few blocks of Twin Pines Park, Sixth Avenue and the train station. This is the oldest part of town, where Belmont's commercial life first took shape, and for most of the past century it has been the quieter side of El Camino Real. This month, the city's celebration starts there.
The first ice cream shop on this corner lost out to the west side
The Jolly's building has done this job before. According to the shop's own history, the site was home in 1910 to the Chanticleer Ice Cream and Candy Shop, run by Mrs. Barrett and her daughter Winifred. A Belmont Historical Society booklet adds that the Barrett shop served locals and students from the Reid School for Boys. It closed in the early 1920s, after a competing business opened west of El Camino Real.
That small detail shows a larger shift. The Historical Society identifies Angelo's Corners, at Ralston Avenue and Old County Road, as Belmont's first business center, where Angelo established the town's first roadhouse. The rail line came first. A 2018 Historical Society booklet says the railway was finished in 1864, a depot opened in August 1867, and that depot stood until 1952. The old downtown grew up around the station. Once a rival opened across El Camino in the early 1920s, the corner's ice cream business went with it.
Jolly's says its building is "one of the last surviving pieces of Belmont's original main street," and that ice cream has now returned to the space after more than a hundred years. The shop also notes free parking in the adjoining lot.
The building has also been in the movies. In the early 1920s it appeared in the background of Pop Tuttle the Fire Chief, a silent film from The Plum Center Series made by the Paul Gerson Pictures Corporation of San Francisco. "Plum Center" was the films' name for Belmont, chosen because the town sits halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. Jolly's dates the film to 1922. The city's tour listing says 1923.
October 18: the walk that ends with the movie
The free Historical Walking Tour of Belmont runs Sunday, October 18, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Volunteer historian Chuck Cotten leads it, and the city promises stories of "speakeasies and gangsters, flower farms and military outposts, rock stars and Olympians." Space is limited and registration is required through the city's RSVP link at bit.ly/4cwkYln.
The route, as the city describes it:
- Twin Pines Senior Center, 20 Twin Pines Lane. Starting point.
- Twin Pines Park and the downtown neighborhood. The walk passes through the park and the streets around it.
- The Belmont train station platform. The city calls the station what was "once considered the Hub of the Peninsula." From here, Cotten points out landmarks of Belmont's oldest neighborhood.
- Jolly's Old-Fashioned Teas Cream. A stop for ice cream to celebrate the 100th birthday, plus a screening of Pop Tuttle the Fire Chief, filmed on these blocks a century ago.
- Waltermire Street. The walk returns to Twin Pines Park past the historic homes on this street.
That last stretch is worth reading up on before you go. Belmont city historian Russ Estep wrote that the area around Waltermire, O'Neill and Emmett streets, south of Ralston, was an early residential district. He pointed to two survivors on Waltermire: a former tank house, and a former library that now sits beneath a raised house at Waltermire and Fifth Avenue. Most drivers pass these streets on the way to somewhere else. The tour slows them down to walking speed.
If you can't get a spot, the city's 2026 State of the City video has a centennial theme, and the city also produces a podcast called "100 Years of Belmont Memories." Both are linked from the centennial page, along with the Belmont Historical Society.
October 24: the parade drives downhill into the old core
The Centennial Fest route follows the same geography. The car parade starts at 1:30 p.m. at Chula Vista Drive and Alameda de las Pulgas. It heads north on the Alameda, turns right onto Ralston Avenue, runs east down Ralston, and turns right onto Sixth Avenue. It ends at the 1000 block of Sixth near City Hall, where a car show is set up. The parade starts on the hill and finishes in the downtown by the tracks.
The parade is invite-only, with a maximum of 50 cars carrying city staff, elected officials and community partners. The city has asked owners of vintage cars and convertibles to volunteer to carry dignitaries.
| Time | What happens | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1:30 p.m. | Car parade begins | Chula Vista Dr. and Alameda de las Pulgas |
| After the parade | Car show | Sixth Ave near City Hall |
| 3:30 p.m. | Time capsule ceremony, with the band Alameda de Las Pulgas | In front of the Twin Pines Senior Center and Parks and Recreation Office |
| Afternoon into evening | Festival with live music on two stages, food trucks, games | Twin Pines Park |
| 7:30 p.m. | Drone show | Best viewed in front of City Hall |
Community members chose the time capsule's contents through a survey earlier this year. The city has not listed what made the cut.
Who's playing and who's pouring
The city lists four bands across two stages: Drini and the Wild Cats, Trevor & The Long Haul, New Shoes Blues Band, and Alameda de Las Pulgas. The last is playing during the time capsule ceremony. Park Boosters will sell beer and wine from Alpha Acid. The announced food trucks are Jolly's Old-Fashioned Teas Cream, Kona's Ice, Travelin Tom's Coffee, Jika's Kitchen, Respectable Bird, Sam's Chowder Mobile, Jaylis Cocina and Me So Hungry Too, all subject to change.
Admission is free. You can bring your own food and non-alcoholic drinks, including takeout from local restaurants. You cannot bring opened alcoholic drinks that weren't bought from the Park Boosters vendor. The city will set out a few tables and chairs and suggests bringing your own chairs and blankets, the way you would for the Summer Concert series or Movies in the Park.
Closures and parking
The festival is centered on the old downtown, so closures there last the longest.
- Twin Pines Park: closed from 5 p.m. Friday, October 23, until 8 a.m. Sunday, October 25.
- Sixth Avenue from Ralston to O'Neill: closed all day Saturday.
- Alameda de las Pulgas from Ralston to the San Carlos city limit, and Ralston from the Alameda to El Camino Real: temporary closures from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Closures along the route are intermittent, mostly from noon to 3 p.m.
- Parts of Sixth Avenue and Emmett Avenue: closed to cars and pedestrians for the drone show, 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, and for a practice run from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Friday.
The city suggests parking at Caltrain, at Notre Dame de Namur University's lower lot near the Taube Center or its East Lot up the driveway to the right, or on nearby streets. It warns that parking will be limited and encourages carpooling, biking or walking. If you live near Emmett or O'Neill, the Friday practice closure is easy to forget.
The weeks around it stay on the same few blocks
The rest of the fall calendar stays near Twin Pines Lane:
- Saturday, October 17, 6 to 9 p.m.: Twin Pines Arts' free Music & Open Mic Night at Twin Pines Manor, 10 Twin Pines Lane.
- Wednesday, October 28, 5 to 7 p.m.: the free, all-ages Belmont Boo Bash in Twin Pines Park, with trunk-or-treat, a haunted house, live music and food trucks.
- Saturday, November 7, 1 to 4 p.m.: a free Diwali celebration hosted by the city and the Belmont Library at the Twin Pines Senior & Community Center, 20 Twin Pines Lane.
Belmont's other daily centers, Carlmont Village up the hill and the El Camino corridor, are covered in our look at why Belmont has two main streets. The centennial calendar spends nearly all of October on the older one.
Two ways to take part reach beyond the park. The city's "100 Celebrations" effort counts any neighbor gathering, from a dinner or walk to a coffee or happy hour, toward a goal of 100 during the centennial year. Email [email protected] to get yours counted and to ask for a Centennial party bag while supplies last. Official centennial pins cost $4, hats $15 and shirts $25. They're sold at community events and at the Parks and Recreation Office, 30 Twin Pines Lane, by credit card or Apple Pay only, and the proceeds support centennial programs. Purchases from the separate online swag shop do not send any money to the city.
The Chanticleer shop closed about a century ago, and the room at 1110 Old County Road is selling ice cream again in Belmont's 100th year. On October 18 it is also where the tour stops to watch the town on film.
Many homes on Waltermire, O'Neill and Emmett were standing long before the parade route was mapped. If you own one and want to know what it takes to keep an older Belmont house sound, or to update it without losing what makes it old, David Bergman brings a general contractor's eye to that conversation. Let's Connect.