San Jose
—  City  —
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe
Images, from top down, left to right: Downtown San Jose, De Anza Hotel, East San Jose suburbs, Lick Observatory, Plaza de César Chávez
Flag of San Jose Flag Official seal of San Jose Seal
Nickname(s): S.J.
Motto: The Capital of Silicon Valley
Location of San Jose within Santa Clara County, California
San Jose Location in the United States
Coordinates: 37°20′7″N 121°53′31″W / 37.33528°N 121.89194°W / 37.33528; -121.89194Coordinates: 37°20′7″N 121°53′31″W / 37.33528°N 121.89194°W / 37.33528; -121.89194
Country	United States
State	California
County	Santa Clara
Pueblo founded	November 29, 1777
Incorporated	March 27, 1850
Government
• Type	Charter city, Council-manager
• Mayor	Chuck Reed
• Vice Mayor	Madison Nguyen
• City Manager	Debra Figone
• Senate	List of Senators Ellen Corbett Joe Simitian Elaine Alquist Sam Blakeslee
• Assembly	Assembly List Rich Gordon Sally J. Lieber Nora Campos Jim Beall Anna M. Caballero
Area[1]
• City	179.965 sq mi (466.109 km2)
• Land	176.526 sq mi (457.201 km2)
• Water	3.439 sq mi (8.908 km2)
• Urban	447.82 sq mi (720.69 km2)
• Metro	8,818 sq mi (22,681 km2)
Elevation[2]	85 ft (26 m)
Population (2012)
• City	971,372
• Rank	1st in Santa Clara County 3rd in California 10th in the United States
• Density	5,400/sq mi (2,100/km2)
• Urban	1,836,911
• Metro	1,975,342
• CSA	7,563,460
	City population is an estimate by the California Department of Finance.
Demonym	San Josean
Time zone	PST (UTC−8)
• Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC−7)
ZIP code	95101–95103, 95106, 95108–95139, 95118, 95141, 95142, 95148, 95150–95161, 95164, 95170–95173, 95190–95194, 95196
Area code(s)	408, 669
FIPS code	06-68000
GNIS feature ID	1654952
Website	www.sanjoseca.gov

San Jose ( /ˌsæn hoʊˈseɪ/; Spanish: St. Joseph) is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S.,^[3] and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area is a major component of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.6 million people and the sixth largest metropolitan area (CSA) in the United States.^[4] It is also the most populous city in Northern California.

San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777, as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, the first civilian town in the Spanish colony of Nueva California, which later became Alta California.^[5] The city served as a farming community to support Spanish military installations at San Francisco and Monterey. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital.^[6]

After more than 150 years as a small farming city, San Jose and the surrounding Santa Clara Valley became the last (and largest) contiguous area of undeveloped land surrounding the San Francisco Bay. San Jose experienced increased demand for housing from soldiers and veterans returning from World War II. San Jose then continued its aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s by annexing more land area. The rapid growth of the high-technology and electronics industries further accelerated the transition from an agricultural center, to an urbanized metropolitan area.

By the 1990s, San Jose's location within the booming local technology industry earned the city its nickname, Capital of Silicon Valley. San Jose now maintains global city status and is the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area in terms of population, land area, and industrial development.^[7]The U.S. Census Bureau reported the population of the city to be 945,942 as of the 2010 Census. As of January 2012 the California Department of Finance estimated the population of San Jose as 971,372.^[8]

San Jose, along with the Santa Clara Valley, experienced about half a century of spectacular suburban sprawl, with characteristics of intense urbanization similar to the Los Angeles area of Southern California. The city has taken definite steps to avoid becoming "L.A. North".^[9]

History[link]

Prior to European settlement, the area was inhabited by several groups of Ohlone Native Americans.^[10] The first lasting European presence began with a series of Franciscan missions established from 1769 by Father Junípero Serra.^[11] On orders from Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, San Jose was founded by Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe (in honor of Saint Joseph) on November 29, 1777, to establish a farming community. The town was the first civil settlement in Alta California.^[12]

In 1797, the pueblo was moved from its original location, near the present-day intersection of Guadalupe Parkway and Taylor Street, to a location in what is now Downtown San Jose. San Jose came under Mexican rule in 1821 after Mexico broke with the Spanish crown. It then became part of the United States, after it capitulated in 1846 and California was annexed.^[10] Soon afterwards, on March 27, 1850, San Jose became the second incorporated city in the state (after Sacramento), with Josiah Belden its first mayor. The town was the state's first capital, as well as host of the first and second sessions (1850–1851) of the California Legislature. Today the Circle of Palms Plaza in downtown is the historical marker for the first state capital.

Though not impacted as severely as San Francisco, San Jose suffered damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Over 100 people died at the Agnews Asylum (later Agnews State Hospital) after its walls and roof collapsed,^[13] and the San Jose High School's three-story stone-and-brick building was also destroyed. The period during World War II was a tumultuous time. Japanese Americans primarily from Japantown were sent to internment camps,^{[citation needed]} including the future mayor, Norman Mineta. Following the Los Angeles zoot suit riots, anti-Mexican violence took place during the summer of 1943.^{[citation needed]} The entire region prepared for the beginning of the war.

As World War II started, the city's economy shifted from agriculture (the Del Monte cannery was the largest employer) to industrial manufacturing with the contracting of the Food Machinery Corporation (later known as FMC Corporation) by the United States War Department to build 1000 Landing Vehicle Tracked.^[14] After World War II, FMC (later United Defense, and currently BAE Systems) continued as a defense contractor, with the San Jose facilities designing and manufacturing military platforms such as the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and various subsystems of the M1 Abrams.^[15] IBM established its West Coast headquarters in San Jose in 1943 and opened a downtown research and development facility in 1952. Both would prove to be harbingers for the economy of San Jose, as Reynold Johnson and his team would later invent RAMAC, as well as the Hard disk drive, and the technological side of San Jose's economy grew.^[16]

During the 1950s and 1960s, city manager A. P. "Dutch" Hamann led the city in a major growth campaign. The city annexed adjacent areas, such as Alviso and Cambrian Park, providing large areas for suburbs. An anti-growth reaction to the effects of rapid development emerged in the 1970s championed by mayors Norman Mineta and Janet Gray Hayes. Despite establishing an urban growth boundary, development fees, and incorporations of Campbell and Cupertino, development was not slowed, but rather directed into already incorporated areas.^[14] San Jose's position in Silicon Valley triggered more economic and population growth, which led to the highest housing costs increase in the nation, 936% between 1976 and 2001.^[17] Efforts to increase density continued into 1990s when an update of the 1974 urban plan kept the urban growth boundaries intact and voters rejected a ballot measure to ease development restrictions in the foothills. Sixty percent of the housing built in San Jose since 1980 and over three-quarters of the housing built since 2000 have been multifamily structures, reflecting a political propensity toward Smart Growth planning principles.^[18]

Name[link]

On April 3, 1979, the San Jose City Council adopted San José, with the diacritical mark on the "e", as the spelling of the city name on the city seal, official stationery, office titles and department names. Also, by city council convention, this spelling of San José is used when the name is stated in both upper- and lower-case letters, but not when the name is stated only in upper-case letters. The accent reflects the Spanish version of the name, and the dropping of accents in all-capital writing was typical in Spanish. The name is still more commonly spelled without the diacritical mark as San Jose. The official name of the city remains City of San Jose with no diacritical mark, according to the City Charter.^[19] However, the City's website uses San José.^[20]

Geography[link]

Downtown San Jose, looking over the Tech Museum and Plaza de César Chávez park.

Looking west over northern San Jose (downtown is at far left) and other parts of Silicon Valley. See an up-to-the-minute view of San Jose from the Mount Hamilton web camera

San Jose is located at 37°20′07″N 121°53′31″W / 37.335278°N 121.891944°W / 37.335278; -121.891944.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 180.0 square miles (466 km²), of which 3.4 square miles (8.9 km²; 1.91%) is water.

San Jose lies between the San Andreas Fault, the source of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the Calaveras Fault. San Jose is shaken by moderate earthquakes, above four on the Richter Scale, on average of one to two times a year. These quakes originate just east of the city on the creeping section of the Calaveras Fault, which is a major source of earthquake activity in Northern California. On April 14, 1984, at 1:15 pm, local time a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Calaveras Fault near San Jose's Mount Hamilton.^[21] The most serious earthquake, in 1906, damaged many buildings in San Jose as described earlier. Earlier significant quakes rocked the city in 1839, 1851, 1858, 1864, 1865, 1868, and 1891.^{[citation needed]} The Daly City Earthquake of 1957 caused some damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 also did some damage to parts of the city. The other faults near San Jose are the Monte Vista Fault and the Hayward Fault Zone.

Topography[link]

The Guadalupe River runs from the Santa Cruz Mountains (which separate the South Bay from the Pacific Coast) flowing north through San Jose, ending in the San Francisco Bay at Alviso. Along the southern part of the river is the neighborhood of Almaden Valley, originally named for the mercury mines which produced mercury needed for gold extraction from quartz during the California Gold Rush as well as mercury fulminate blasting caps and detonators for the U.S. military from 1870 to 1945.^[22] East of the Guadalupe River, Coyote Creek also flows to south San Francisco Bay and originates on Mount Sizer near Henry W. Coe State Park and the surrounding hills in the Diablo Range, northeast of Morgan Hill, California.

The lowest point in San Jose is 13 feet (4 m) below sea level at the San Francisco Bay in Alviso;^[23] the highest is 2,125 feet.^[24] Due to the proximity to Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton, San Jose has taken several steps to reduce light pollution, including replacing all street lamps and outdoor lighting in private developments with low pressure sodium lamps.^[25] To recognize the city's efforts, the asteroid 6216 San Jose was named after the city.^[26]

San Jose lies close to the Pacific Ocean and close to San Francisco Bay (a small portion of its northern border touches the bay). Santa Clara Valley is the population center of the Bay Area, and like the hub and spokes of a wheel, surrounding communities emanate outwards from the valley. This growth in part, has shaped the greater Bay Area as it is today in terms of geographic population distribution and the trend of suburbanization away from the valley.

There are four distinct valleys in the city of San Jose: Almaden Valley, situated on the south-west fringe of the city; Evergreen Valley to the south-east, which is hilly all throughout its interior; Santa Clara Valley, which includes the flat, main urban expanse of the South Bay; and the rural Coyote Valley, to the city's extreme southern fringe.

Climate[link]

A San Jose city street lined with palms.

San Jose, like most of the Bay Area, has a Subtropical Mediterranean climate.^[27] San Jose has 300+ days of sunshine and an average daily high temperature of 73 °F (23 °C) annually. Although San Jose lies inland and does not front the Pacific Ocean like San Francisco, it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. Because of this, the city is somewhat more sheltered from rain, giving it a semiarid feel with a mean annual rainfall of 14.4 inches (366 mm), compared to some other parts of the Bay Area, which can get about three times that amount.

January's average high is 60 °F (16 °C) and average low is 42 °F (6 °C). July's average high is 84 °F (29 °C) and average low is 57 °F (14 °C).^[28] The highest temperature ever recorded in San Jose was 112 °F (44 °C) on July 19–23, 2006; the lowest was 20 °F (−7 °C) in December 1990. Temperature fluctuations between night and day can vary as little as 10 °F to 12 °F (a fluctuation range of 5.5 °C to 6.6 °C), meaning that its climate does not experience huge temperature drops or rises like some other parts of California.

With the light rainfall, San Jose and its suburbs experience about 300 full or partly sunny days a year. Rain occurs primarily in the months from November through April or May. During the winter and spring, hillsides and fields turn green with grasses and vegetation, although deciduous trees are few. With the coming of the annual hot summer dry period, the vegetation dies and dries, giving the hills a golden cover, which unfortunately also provides fuel for frequent grass fires.

Measurable precipitation falls in downtown San Jose on an average of 50 days a year. Annual precipitation has ranged from 6.12 inches (155 mm) in 1953 to 32.57 inches (827 mm) in 1983. The most precipitation in one month was 10.23 inches (260 mm) in February 1998. The maximum 24-hour rainfall was 3.60 inches (91 mm) on January 30, 1968. Although summer is normally quite dry in San Jose, a very heavy thunderstorm on August 21, 1968, brought 1.92-inch (49 mm) of rain, causing some flooding.^[29]

The snow level drops as low as 2,000 feet (610 m) above sea level, or lower, occasionally coating nearby Mount Hamilton, and less frequently the Santa Cruz Mountains, with snow that normally lasts a few days. This sometimes snarls traffic traveling on State Route 17 towards Santa Cruz. Snow rarely falls in San Jose; the most recent snow to remain on the ground was on February 5, 1976, when many residents around the city saw as much as 3 inches (7.6 cm) on car and roof tops. The official observation station measured only 0.5-inch (13 mm) of snow.

Like most of the Bay Area, San Jose is made up of dozens of microclimates. Downtown San Jose experiences the lightest rainfall in the city, while South San Jose, only 10 miles (16 km) distant, experiences more rainfall and somewhat more extreme temperatures.