San Jose

San Jose, California

San Jose (meaning Saint Joseph in Spanish) is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the United States, and the county seat of Santa Clara County. It is located at the southern end of San Francisco. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area is a major component of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, a region of nearly 7.5 million people.

Once a small farming city, San Jose experienced rapid growth from the 1950s to the present. San Jose is now the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area in terms of population, land area, and industrial development.

San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777, as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, the first town in the Spanish colony of Nueva California, which later became Alta California. 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. After more than 150 years as an agricultural center, San Jose experienced increased demand for housing from soldiers and other veterans returning from World War II, as well as aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s by annexing more land area. By the 1990s, San Jose's location within the booming local technology industry earned the city its nickname, Capital of Silicon Valley.