The Woodside Store was the kind of institution that only exists when a community is too small and too remote to specialize. In the 1850s, the redwood-forested hills above the San Francisco Peninsula were populated by loggers supplying lumber to the booming city across the bay. They needed supplies, mail, a place to drink, and occasionally a dentist. Tripp provided all of it. The store was the hub of civic life in Woodside for over half a century, a place where you could buy a frying pan, post a letter, deposit your wages, have a tooth pulled, and drink a whiskey, possibly in that order. The original 1851 building burned down, and the current structure dates to 1854 -- still standing 170 years later.

The San Mateo Historical Association recognized the store's significance in the 1940s and took it under their stewardship in 1979. A substantial restoration during the mid-1980s, completed by 1994, returned the interior to its 1880s appearance: shelves lined with canned fruit, frying pans, nails, and sewing machines. The store was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. And then there is the ghost. Local legend holds that the store is haunted by the spirit of Tripp's dog, though accounts of what the phantom canine actually does are vague. It is a small-town ghost story, appropriate for a small-town landmark.

Woodside today is one of the wealthiest communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, populated by tech executives and venture capitalists. The store sits at its historic crossroads, a few wooden walls separating the 19th century from the 21st, surrounded by properties worth millions. From the air, the store is invisible among the tree-covered estates of Woodside. On the ground, it is a gentle shock: a Gold Rush-era general store preserved in amber, its shelves stocked with replica goods, its walls bearing the marks of a man who ran the same business for 55 years and whose dog, if you believe the stories, has not yet left.