Did you know that meaning St. Joseph in Spanish, San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the US, and the county seat of Santa Clara County. It 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 nearly 8 million people. Once a small farming city, SJ experienced rapid growth from the 1950s to the present. SJ is now the largest city in the SF Bay Area in terms of population, land area, and industrial development. The California Department of Finance estimated the population at over 1,000,000 as of January 1, 2010. San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777, as El Pueblo de San Jose 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 SF and Monterey. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital. After more than 150 years as an agricultural center, SJ experienced increased demand for housing from soldiers and other veterans returning from WW II, as well as aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s by annexing more land area. By the 1990s, San Joses location within the booming local technology industry earned the city its nickname, Capital of Silicon Valley. Prior to European settlement, the area was inhabited by several groups of Ohlone Native Americans The first lasting European presence began with a series of Franciscan missions established from 1769 by Father Junpero Serra. On orders from Antonio Mara de Bucareli y Ursa, Spanish Viceroy of New Spain, San Jose was founded by Lieutenant Jose Joaqun Moraga as Pueblo de San Jose 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. In 1797, the pueblo was moved from its original location, near the present-day intersection of Guadalupe Parkway and Taylor St, to a location in what is now Downtown SJ. San Jose came under Mexican rule in 1821 after Mexico broke with the Spanish crown. It then became part of the US, after it capitulated in 1846 and Calif. was annexed. Soon afterwards, on March 27, 1850, SJ became the second incorporated city in the state (after Sacramento), with Josiah Belden its first mayor. The town was the states first capital, as well as host of the first and second sessions (1850-1851) of the Calif. Legislature. Today the Circle of Palms Plaza in downtown is the historical marker for the first state capital. Though not impacted as severely as SF, 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, and the San Jose High Schools three story stone and brick building was also destroyed. The period during WW II was a tumultuous time. Japanese Americans primarily from Japantown were sent to internment camps, including the future mayor, Norman Mineta. Following the Los Angeles zoot suit riots, anti Mexican violence took place during the summer of 1943. The entire region prepared for the beginning of the war. As WW II started, the citys 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 US War Depart. to build 1000 Landing Vehicle Tracked. After WW II, FMC (later United Defense, and currently BAE Systems) continued as a defense contractor, with the SJ facilities designing and manufacturing military platforms such as the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and various subsystems of the M1 Abrams. IBM established its West Coast headquarters in San Jose in 1943 and opened a downtown R&D facility in 1952. Both would prove to be harbingers for the economy of SJ, as Reynold Johnson and his team would later invent RAMAC, as well as the Hard disk drive, and the technological side of SJs economy grew. During the 1950s and 1960s, city manager 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. SJs 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. 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 SJ 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 taxiing to the active.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 10:43:28 +0000