What it's known for
San Jose calls itself the Capital of Silicon Valley, a motto it adopted in 1988. Cisco, eBay, Adobe, PayPal and Zoom have their headquarters here, which makes it one of the key cities of the technology industry.
San Jose
City in California, United StatesSan Jose spreads across the Santa Clara Valley on the southern shore of San Francisco Bay in Northern California, about 70 km southeast of San Francisco.
Fun facts
- It was founded on 29 November 1777 as the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, the first civilian settlement in California, and it is named after Saint Joseph.
- When California became a state, San Jose was its first capital, and lawmakers met here from 1849 to 1851.
- The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose had 160 rooms when its owner, Sarah Winchester, died in 1922, and one of its stairways has 44 steps but climbs only about 3 m.
Finding it on the globe
Follow San Francisco Bay to its southern end. San Jose fills the flat valley there, southeast of San Francisco.
Easy to mix up
San Jose in California is not San José, the capital of Costa Rica in Central America. It is also not California's capital, which is Sacramento.
Sources: Wikipedia: San Jose, California, Wikipedia: Winchester Mystery House, Wikipedia: San José, Costa Rica, Wikipedia: Sacramento, California