In the year 1769, the Spanish explorer Jose Francisco Ortega became the first European to set foot in what would one day become Silicon Valley. When Ortega landed he was greeted by the Ohlone tribe of native people which the Spanish called “Costanos,” which translates to “coastal people.” The Ohlone were a hunter-gatherer and occasionally harvester tribe located in the Bay Area. The Ohlone had been in California since 4000 BC, but many things changed in 1777. The Spanish set up the Mission Santa Clara De Asis with the purpose of converting the Ohlone to Christianity.
Fast forward seventy-three years, and California is granted statehood in the United States of America. Two years later, in 1852, Santa Clara became a recognized town named after Mission Santa Clara De Asis. For a century, the valley became centered on agriculture. Orchards grew well in California’s extremely fertile soil. Back then, what we now call the Silicon Valley was known as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight,” particularly famous for its tomatoes.
In 1960, the semi-conductor industry began to sprout, which was the beginning of California’s transition from agriculture to technology. In 1971, Don Hoefler coined the term “Silicon Valley” in a weekly edition of Santa Clara’s “Electronic News.” In 1974, Intel created the Intel 8080 in Silicon Valley. The 8080 would set the basis for microchips running the popular OS at the time.
In 1995, the Internet became open to commercial use. Suddenly, hundreds of startups appeared, causing housing prices in Santa Clara to skyrocket which in 1999 caused the stock market to crash. “About 4,000 IT-related companies located along Highway 101 from San Francisco to San Jose generate approximately $200 billion in IT-related revenue annually,” reports Gregory R. Gromov in The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History.
Even after the dot-com crash, Silicon Valley retained its title as America’s leader in technology. A 2006 article by The Wall Street Journal named Santa Clara one of the twenty most inventive towns in America. Currently the largest employer in Santa Clara is Intel, which employs approximately 10,800 people at its headquarters in Santa Clara, according to a 2010 census. In 2012, Santa Clara was vaulted to national prominence with the construction of Levi’s Stadium, the new home for the San Francisco 49ers.
Santa Clara is home to nineteen K-8 schools, elementaries, and high schools. Santa Clara University was built in 1851 over the remains of the old Mission Santa Clara De Asis. Santa Clara County is also home to the highly prestigious Stanford University, which was founded in 1891.
Santa Clara has a rich and interesting history that goes far beyond the Ohlone, technology, education and agriculture. New advances in biotechnology, particularly gene splicing, pose opportunities for the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. The ink-jet printer, disk drives, and computers are all examples of world-changing products invented here in Santa Clara. Whether as the Valley of Hearts Delight or the Silicon Valley, the people of this area have changed the world for the better in many ways and will continue to do so for years to come.