San Jose: The Capital of Silicon Valley
San Jose was California's first civilian settlement - El Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe, founded in 1777 to grow food for Spanish presidios. For two centuries it remained an agricultural center, its orchards and canneries processing 'The Valley of Heart's Delight.' Then came the transistor, the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the transformation of Santa Clara Valley into Silicon Valley. San Jose sprawled across former farmland, absorbing tech campuses and their workers until it became the Bay Area's largest city, population 1 million. Cisco Systems, Adobe, eBay, PayPal - the headquarters cluster here while San Francisco gets the credit. San Jose's diversity reflects tech immigration: the nation's second-largest Vietnamese community, thriving Mexican and Indian populations, a Japantown that survived when others didn't. The city invented the 'orange sauce' served at taquerias - spicy, creamy, ubiquitous throughout California now but born here.
Silicon Valley's Center
San Jose sits at Silicon Valley's geographic and economic center, surrounded by the tech industry's most famous addresses. Apple is in Cupertino; Google in Mountain View; Meta in Menlo Park. But San Jose houses more tech headquarters than anywhere else: Cisco Systems' massive campus, Adobe's downtown towers, eBay and PayPal's operations. The Winchester Mystery House - Sarah Winchester's bizarre mansion built continuously for 38 years to confuse the ghosts of Winchester rifle victims - now seems like a metaphor for Valley excess. The Tech Interactive downtown introduces children to the world their parents are building. San Jose State University supplies engineering talent; venture capital flows from Sand Hill Road up the peninsula.
The Diverse City
San Jose's Little Saigon, concentrated around Story Road, is the second-largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam - phở shops and bánh mì bakeries serving refugees and their descendants who arrived after 1975. The city's Mexican heritage predates statehood; taquerias invented the 'orange sauce' (salsa naranja) that spread across California. Japantown, one of only three surviving in the United States, preserves businesses and traditions displaced from other cities by urban renewal and wartime internment. South Bay Indian restaurants cluster along El Camino Real into Santa Clara. San Jose's population is plurality Asian and Hispanic, no longer majority white - the demographic future California's politics are still catching up to.
Downtown and SoFA
Downtown San Jose has struggled to develop the walkable urban character that tech workers say they want but haven't built. San Pedro Square Market offers food halls and nightlife; the SoFA (South of First Area) district concentrates clubs and galleries; the SAP Center hosts Sharks hockey and concerts. The San Jose Museum of Art and the Tech Interactive anchor cultural programming. But downtown remains dominated by parking lots waiting for development that zoning and neighborhood opposition have delayed. The California Theatre, a 1927 movie palace, hosts Opera San Jose; the City National Civic hosts touring Broadway. Google's planned downtown transit village would transform the area if it's ever built.
The Sprawl
San Jose is California's third-largest city in population but first in area - 180 square miles of low-rise sprawl spreading across the valley floor. Neighborhoods have distinct characters: Willow Glen's tree-lined downtown, the Rose Garden's historic homes, Almaden Valley's suburban affluence, Evergreen's foothill subdivisions. The VTA light rail connects downtown to suburbs and airports but can't compete with cars for most trips. Santana Row, a mixed-use development designed to feel European, offers upscale shopping and dining in what was once a strip mall. Housing prices make San Jose one of America's most expensive cities - median home prices exceed $1.5 million, pricing out the working class that services tech wealth.
Valley Capital
San Jose International Airport (SJC) offers convenient Southwest and Alaska flights but fewer international options than SFO or OAK. Caltrain connects to San Francisco in an hour; BART now reaches downtown from the East Bay. I-280 and US-101 carry crushing commuter traffic; Highway 17 winds over the mountains to Santa Cruz and the beach. From altitude, San Jose appears as endless development filling the Santa Clara Valley - the tech campuses invisible among the sprawl, the hills of the Diablo Range rising to the east, the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west. What appears from the air as suburban America's apotheosis is the capital of Silicon Valley, where the future is invented in unremarkable office parks and where garage startups became the world's most valuable companies.
From the Air
Located at 37.34°N, 121.88°W in the Santa Clara Valley at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. From altitude, San Jose appears as sprawling development filling the valley floor between the Diablo Range and the Santa Cruz Mountains - no dramatic skyline, no obvious center, just mile after mile of low-rise urbanization. What appears from the air as generic California sprawl is the capital of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area's largest city, and headquarters to Cisco, Adobe, eBay, and dozens of other tech companies.