SAN BRUNO owes its name to Spanish explorer Bruno Hecate, who named San Bruno Mountain in honor of the founder of a medieval monastic order. The area, for millennia the home of Costanoan Indians, soon became a pasture for livestock from the nearby mission, St. Francis of Assisi, and then for dairy cattle.

Development began when a stagecoach stop, called Thorp's Place, was built in 1849. Next, the Southern Pacific train route cut through in the 1860s. But it remained a largely quiet rural community until the 1906 earthquake, after which an exodus of San Francisco refugees turned it into one of the fastest-growing regions on the Peninsula. An energetic campaign by a local paper, the San Bruno Herald, led to the incorporation of the city in 1914.

The city has since become a transit hub, crisscrossed by interstates 280 and 380, Highway 101, Caltrain and BART. Nearby is San Francisco International Airport.