San Jose San Jose, the third-largest city in California, is the heart of Silicon Valley, the home of many high-tech companies. San Jose was the state capital from 1849 to 1852.

San Jose
San Jose, the third-largest city in California, is the heart of Silicon Valley, the home of many high-tech companies. San Jose was the state capital from 1849 to 1852

San Jose was founded in 1777 and named Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe. It was the first California settlement that was neither a fort nor a mission. It was a farming community that supplied crops and cattle to the nearby forts of San Francisco and Monterey.

San Jose was the first state capital (18491852). After the Civil War, farmers experimented with growing plums, apricots, and grapes on the fertile lands surrounding the city. With its excellent rail connections,

San Jose became the largest wine-making, canning, and dried-fruit-packing center in the country. Today, San Jose's economy is tied to computers. Its real growth began after World War II, when Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto became the hub of the technological revolution. The university is located in an 8,000-acre (3,200-hectare) industrial park where television, radar, microwaves, and transistors were developed.

More than 2,500 computer, electronic, and other high-tech companies moved to the San Jose area. Because computer chips are made of the element silicon, it earned the name Silicon Valley. San Jose is the capital of Silicon Valley.

San Jose's biggest attractions are two museums. The first, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, contains the largest collection of Egypt artifacts on exhibit in the western United States. The second, the Winchester Mystery House, was once the home of Sarah Winchester, who inherited the Winchester rifle fortune. She believed that as long as she continued adding on to her mansion, she would not die.

Winchester kept building crews busy for 38 years. The result is a rambling house that has 160 rooms, 950 doors, 10,000 windows, and 40 staircases, and several passageways. Even Winchester and her servants needed a map to find their way around.

Several famous people hail from San Jose. It is the birthplace of Olympic figure skater Peggy Fleming. It is also the first major American city to elect a woman mayor Janet Gray Hayes in 1974. The city was also the home of the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League.

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