The story
The Woodside Store stands at its crossroads in the redwood hills of San Mateo County, California — built in 1854 by Dr. Robert Orville Tripp and partner, serving the lumber camps that were felling the peninsula's redwoods with everything from flour to dentistry, for Tripp doctored and pulled teeth across the counter of the emporium he kept for over four decades until his death in 1909; the county preserved the store as one of its first historic sites, and it operates as a museum of shelves stocked to period, school groups weighing beans where whipsawyers once traded. Its telling is docent-gentle: staff and visitors describe footsteps on the plank floor of the empty store, goods found shifted on the shelves, a bearded figure of tradition — Dr. Tripp, in the telling — by the counter and dispensary corner, and cold drafts by the stove; accounts held lightly at a museum whose real treasure is its intactness. Present the store as redwood-era commerce preserved first, its storekeeper's presence the county's fondest tradition. Open days from county parks pages.