from 1837 to 1863, following the death of his father and founder of the rancho, Don José Joaquín Bernal. Santa Teresa was founded in 1834 as
Rancho Santa Teresa, a
rancho grant given by Governor
José Figueroa to Don José Joaquín Bernal, a retired soldier who came to
Alta California as part of the
De Anza Expedition in 1776. Prior to receiving the rancho grant, José Joaquín Bernal had already settled in the area since 1826. Rancho Santa Teresa quickly became an important center for
Californio life in the southern Santa Clara Valley, attracting
vaqueros and their families from the region with regular
fiestas featuring
Fandango dancing and large feasts.
Technology in Santa Teresa Many technology-related companies have campuses in the Santa Teresa area.
Equinix, an American multinational internet-connectivity company, has their Great Oaks campus situated in the north-eastern corner of Santa Teresa. The company, founded in 1998, boasts 5
data centers in their Great Oaks campus, SV1, opened in 1999, SV5 in 2010, SV10 in 2017, SV11 in 2021, and SV12 in 2024. There are currently two more Equinix data centers in the process of construction in the Great Oaks campus, SV18 and SV19, with completion expected to be 2026 and 2028, respectively. headquarters in northern Santa Teresa.|251x251px
Western Digital, an American data storage and hard disk drive manufacturing company, has their company headquarters in the northern portion of the Santa Teresa neighborhood. The company's headquarters were moved from
Irvine to their Great Oaks campus in April 2017. The Great Oaks campus, which was built by
IBM in 1956 and was owned by
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies after acquiring IBM's hard disk drive in 2003, became part of Western Digital when HGST was bought for $3.9B USD in March 2012.
IBM, an American multinational technology company, has many facilities in the Santa Teresa area. The first IBM facility in Santa Teresa was the Cottle Road campus, which was built in the 1950's along Cottle Road. The campus was built to help mass-manufacture the
IBM 305 RAMAC, the first computer ever built that utilized a
hard disk drive. The campus, which was built in 1957, sprawled 210 acres and was designed with "low rise buildings, art, and a cafeteria." Most notable of all of these buildings was Building 025, where the mass production of the RAMAC and the development of the first
floating hard disk drive occurred. Production of the RAMAC and floating hard disk drive in Building 025 continued until 1996, when the building became vacant as employees were moved to other locations. Building 025 stood standing until 2008, when a fire destroyed what was left of the building. In its place today stands a
Lowe's. A nearby building, Building 11, was used a self-service cafeteria at the campus, serving upwards of 10,000 employees at the campus' peak, and even receiving a visit from Soviet Leader
Nikita Khrushchev in 1959. When the surrounding buildings were being demolished to make room for high-density housing in the mid-2000's, Western Digital purchased the vacant building to preserve its history. Building 11 once had plans for a technology museum, but however, it currently sits abandoned and fenced off. RAMAC Park, which sits adjacent to the now-abandoned Building 11, was named after the IBM 305 RAMAC computer.
IBM Research has their
Almaden research facility in the Santa Teresa Hills south of Santa Teresa. The site was built in 1985 due to its close proximity to
Stanford University,
UC Santa Cruz, and
UC Berkeley. The site occupies 700 acres and was sold to IBM by the Joice family, who operated
a ranch at the base of the hills. IBM donated the unused land to
Santa Clara County, who used the land for the Santa Teresa County Park. IBM's Silicon Valley Lab sits just south of Santa Teresa, on Bailey Ave in
Coyote Valley. In 1974, the company purchased 1,180 acres of land that formerly belonged to Rancho Santa Teresa, and constructed the first programming laboratory in Silicon Valley, which was completed in 1977. ==Geography==