Fergie's Tech Blog

San José is the third-largest city in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Santa Clara County. For the past several years, it has held the title of The Safest Big City in America. San Jose is located in Silicon Valley, at the south end of the San Francisco Bay. With a population of 953,679, San Jose is the largest city in Northern California.

Originally known as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, it was founded on November 29th, 1777 as the first town in the Spanish colony of Nueva California, which later became Alta California. The city served as a farming community to support Spanish military installations at San Francisco and Monterey. After California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital.

After over 150 years as an agricultural center, increased demand for housing from soldiers and other veterans returning from World War II and starting families, as well as aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s led to San Jose being a bedroom community for Silicon Valley in the 1970s, which attracted more businesses to the city. By the 1990s, San Jose's central location within the booming technology industry in the area earned the city the nickname as the Capital of Silicon Valley.

On April 3, 1979, the city council adopted San José as the spelling of the city name on the city seal and official stationery; however, the name is still more commonly spelled without the diacritical mark. The official name of the city is The City of San José.