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San Jose is located within the Santa Clara Valley, in the southern part of the Bay Area in Northern California. The northernmost portion of San Jose touches San Francisco Bay at Alviso, though most of the city lies away from the bayshore.
- Overview
- History
- The contemporary city
San Jose, city, seat (1850) of Santa Clara county, west-central California, U.S. It lies in the Santa Clara Valley along Coyote Creek and the Guadalupe River, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of San Francisco. The city, located just southeast of San Francisco Bay, sprawls over a broad floodplain that gradually slopes upward toward more rugged terrain to the east and south. With its semiarid climate, San Jose is known for its sunny, mild weather.
San Jose, the third largest city in California, is also the most populous component of the extensive metropolitan area around the bay that, in addition to San Francisco, includes Oakland. Neighbouring communities include Milpitas (northeast), Alum Rock (east), Los Gatos (southwest), Campbell and Santa Clara (west), and Sunnyvale (northwest). The city constitutes the hub of Silicon Valley, the region of high-technology and computer-related industries that stretches along the southwestern shore of the bay toward San Francisco. Inc. 1850. Area city, 178 square miles (461 square km). Pop. (2010) 945,942; San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara Metro Area, 1,836,911; (2020) 1,013,240; San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara Metro Area, 2,000,468
Costanoan Indians lived in the area when European explorers arrived in the mid-18th century. The first civic settlement in California, it was founded by José Joaquin Moraga in 1777 as a Spanish farming community and was named Pueblo de San José de Guadalupé for St. Joseph (San José). During the Spanish colonial and Mexican periods, it supplied wheat, vegetables, and cattle to the military garrisons at Monterey and San Francisco. After the American occupation of California in 1846, San Jose briefly became the new state’s first capital, and the first state legislative assembly convened there in December 1849. (The state capital was moved to Vallejo in 1852 and, permanently, to Sacramento in 1854.) In March 1850 San Jose became the first chartered city in California, by which time it had become a bustling trade depot for the goldfields east of Sacramento. In 1864 the coming of the railroad from San Francisco gave San Jose improved trade connections and enabled the produce of nearby farms to be readily shipped to San Francisco. The Santa Clara Valley thus soon developed into a region of orchards and fruit processing.
Until 1940 most of the city’s industries remained centred on food processing and the manufacture of orchard supplies and agricultural equipment. During and after World War II, however, there was a meteoric growth in the manufacture of such durable goods as electrical machinery, aircraft parts, and motor vehicles. Large aerospace and business-equipment firms located plants in the area, and San Jose’s rise as the anchor of Silicon Valley produced an even more spectacular burst of growth for the city that only increased with the boom in Internet-related industries in the 1990s. The city annexed land at a rapid rate, more than tripling its area between 1960 and 2000; during that same period its population more than quadrupled. The citizenry has long been ethnically diverse, with large and growing Asian and Hispanic communities that combined now constitute some three-fifths of the total population.
San Jose’s economy remains heavily focused on high technology. Computer hardware design and manufacturing, software production, and Internet concerns are its major industries. Electronic equipment, semiconductors, scientific instruments, and industrial machinery are produced, and business, health, and engineering services are other important economic factors. The Santa Clara Valley continues to be a productive agricultural area. Major crops include greenhouse plants, cut flowers, mushrooms, and an array of fruits and vegetables (notably wine grapes, cherries, peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce); beef cattle are also raised.
The city is home to San Jose State University (1857; part of the California State University system) and San Jose City College (1921); Santa Clara and Stanford universities are nearby. San Jose supports a variety of music, dance, and theatre organizations, including professional ballet and opera companies. Notable museums include the San Jose Museum of Art and the Tech Museum of Innovation. Rosicrucian Park has a museum of Egyptian antiquities and a planetarium and science centre. The Winchester Mystery House, a 160-room Victorian mansion filled with unusual architectural features, was under construction continuously between 1884 and 1922 by the eccentric widow Sarah Winchester, heir to the fortune of the firearms-manufacturing company. It is maintained as a museum, as are Peralta Adobe (1797), the last remaining structure from the original pueblo, and nearby Fallon House (1855), built for one of the city’s first mayors.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Though culturally diverse and historical, San Jose – awash in Silicon Valley’s suburbia – has always been in San Francisco’s shadow. Founded in 1777 as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, San Jose is California’s oldest Spanish civilian settlement.
Often called "the capital of Silicon Valley", San Jose is the largest city in the Bay Area, 3rd largest in California, and the 10th largest city in the United States. It was named the 6th safest big city in the U.S. in 2015.
Dec 25, 2022 · With 300 sunny days a year and a rich mix of cultural, historical, and natural landmarks, California’s San Jose is so much more than the capital of Silicon Valley.
San Jose, City (pop., 2020: 1,013,240), west-central California, U.S. Located southeast of San Francisco, San Jose was the first civic settlement in California. Founded in 1777 as a farming community, it became a Spanish military supply base and was the state’s first capital (1849–52).
San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley and the cultural and technological epicenter of Northern California. We're a gateway to the greater Bay Area and accessible hub for exploration and travel with 18 unique neighborhoods.
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