Junipero Serra Boulevard is a major boulevard in and south of San Francisco named after Franciscan friar Junipero Serra. Within the city, it forms part of the route of State Route 1, the shortest connection between Interstate 280 and the Golden Gate Bridge. The remainder, in San Mateo County, was bypassed or replaced by I-280, the Junipero Serra Freeway. The boulevard was one of several new roads built along the San Francisco Peninsula before the age of freeways, and became a state highway known as Route 237 in 1956, receiving the State Route 117 designation in the 1964 renumbering, only to be deleted from the state highway system the next year. Two other regional highways—Bayshore Highway and Skyline Boulevard—were also upgraded into or bypassed by freeways.

Saint Junípero Serra Ferrer, popularly known simply as Junipero Serra, was a Spanish Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Order. He is credited with establishing the Franciscan Missions in the Sierra Gorda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He founded a mission in Baja California and established eight of the 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, in what was then Spanish-occupied Alta California in the Province of Las Californias, New Spain.