The earliest known inhabitants on the Santa Clara Valley are the
Ohlone people, who had eight distinct languages and tribes in the coastal region.
Mission Santa Clara de Asís, which had control over a vast tract of land stretching from
Palo Alto to Gilroy, was founded by
Franciscans in 1777.
The Valley of Heart's Delight The valley with its scenic beauty, mild climate, and thousands of acres of blooming fruit trees was known as "The Valley of Heart's Delight".
Prunes were a major crop, with the valley was producing the majority of prunes in California by 1900 and shipped internationally. Water was supplied from an
artesian aquifer and when the water table dropped, wells were pumped. Many orchards were small with housing and fruit growing in a dispersed pattern. By the 1920s and 1930s, the agricultural and horticultural industries were doing well in the valley and included 18 canneries, 13 dried-fruit packing houses, and 12 fresh-fruit and vegetable shipping firms, and they were shipping internationally.
Del Monte and
Sunsweet are two brands which originated in the Santa Clara Valley. The need for workers greatly exceeded the local population and in the nineteenth century, Chinese and Japanese immigrants met that need. Toward the end of the nineteenth century many Italians and other immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe came to the valley and worked in the orchards and canneries. During the 20th century there were Filipino immigrants and increasing numbers of immigrants from Mexico who during World War II became the dominant agricultural workforce. The town of San Jose was dominated by its business community, which was in part composed of Irish Catholics, who had a self-contained social life which did not include immigrant labor. There was marked prejudice against Asians, particularly Chinese, who gradually left the valley.
The Great Depression Deflation and
overproduction severely hurt the orchards and packers of the Santa Clara Valley during the
Great Depression. Bankrupt farmers from the
Dust Bowl, the
Okies, made the trek to California
. Desperate to feed their families, they joined a workforce that was itself impacted by unemployment. The growers, with record low prices and surplus supply, could pay little. Labor organizers and
goon squads battled in the labor camps.
Woody Guthrie's songs were on the radio and he wrote a regular column in the San Francisco-based ''
The Daily People's World'' for the workers. San Francisco had a strong labor union tradition which thrived in Santa Clara County. During the "
March Inland" organizing drive the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) backed the
Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU), a
Communist-controlled union headquartered in San Jose, which had considerable success organizing farm and cannery workers in the Santa Clara Valley and elsewhere in California The canneries, with a segregated seasonal work force of white women, were eventually organized, at first by an AFL-affiliated company union, but one which gradually evolved, thanks to rank and file efforts, into a union which genuinely represented cannery workers.
War and industry The fruit industry gradually recovered, and by the early 1940s, prosperity returned to the valley. Wartime production associated with World War II brought industry to the valley such as building of marine engines for
Liberty ships by the
Joshua Hendy Iron Works, now
Northrop Grumman Marine Systems in
Sunnyvale;
landing craft were built by
Food Machinery Corporation, which later built the
M113 armored personnel carrier, the
Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the
XR311 at its facility in
Santa Clara; and an
IBM factory began manufacturing
punch cards in San Jose in 1943. About 1,000
Japanese were interned, losing substantial property. Wartime production drew workers, including
women, from the orchards and canneries; they were replaced by
Mexican Americans from Texas and California and by Mexican
braceros. Neighborhoods in East San Jose, such as the
Meadowfair district, became
barrios. The
Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile was built during the Cold War by Lockheed Missiles & Space Division in Sunnyvale for the
United States Navy, while Northrop Grumman Marine Systems built the launch tubes and propulsion systems. For the most part, the defense industry and traditional electronics manufacturers, with the exception of IBM, in the Santa Clara Valley were unionized, mainly by the
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers,
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Teamsters. The
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a communist dominated union, but friendly to minority and women workers, gradually lost its place during the McCarthy era.
Silicon Valley In the 1950s, the first
transistor industries were established in the area. Led by
Stanford University, the lower San Francisco Peninsula became a global
tech hub, known as Silicon Valley. The name refers to
silicon, the most common
semiconductor used to produce
microchips and other electronic devices.
San Jose In 1950,
Dutch Hamann was appointed
city manager of San Jose. Hamann's boosterism was supported by
Joe Ridder, publisher of the
San Jose Mercury. In power until 1969, Hamann created a
master plan for San Jose and embarked on a program of
annexation that increased the area of San Jose from 17 square miles to 136.7 square miles. The main bargaining chip was the superior
sewage system built to handle cannery waste. To overcome resistance by school districts, who otherwise would have lost their tax base, annexed areas were allowed to maintain independent school districts. This resulted in some parts of the city, such as
East San Jose, having low-quality segregated school systems with a low tax base while school systems in other parts of San Jose had an ample tax base and high-quality schools. The population of San Jose increased from 95 thousand in 1950 to 446 thousand in 1970. There were critics: Santa Clara County Planning Director Karl Belser, who opposed
urban sprawl, commented, "Perhaps the only use we will ever find for the hydrogen bomb will be to erase this great mistake from the face of the earth." Housing for each additional 1000 people took 257 acres of land. In more recent years, San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley have suffered from extensive
droughts in California to the extent that some residents may run out of household water by the summer of 2022.
Schools Funding for public schools in upscale communities in the Santa Clara Valley is often supplemented by grants from private foundations set up for that purpose and funded by local residents. Schools in less favorable demographics must depend on state funding. ==Cities and towns==