Santa Clara Apartments
Santa Clara Apartment Listings
Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asis, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the grounds of Santa Clara University.
Santa Clara is home to both Mission College and Santa Clara University, the latter being the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of California.
Santa Clara is also home to Paramount’s Great America, an amusement park operated by Paramount Parks.
Santa Clara is located in the center of Silicon Valley, and is home to the headquarters of Intel, Applied Materials, Sun Microsystems, NVIDIA, and many other high-tech companies.
The San Francisco 49ers NFL football team has its headquarters and practice facilities in Santa Clara. On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, the 49ers announced their intention to move the team to Santa Clara, after negotiations failed with the city of San Francisco to build a new stadium. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 102,361.
Santa Clara owns and operates an electric utility called Silicon Valley Power. Recently Silicon Valley Power brought online a brand new gas-powered electric plant called DVR. The new plant produces 130 megawatts of electricity for the city and its residents. As a result, the going rate for electricity in Santa Clara is considerably cheaper than that offered by Northern California’s dominant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.
The first European to visit the valley was Jose Francisco Ortega in 1769. He found the area to be inhabited by the Los Costanos (Spanish for the Ohlone Native Americans). The Spanish began to colonize California with 21 missions and the Mission Santa Clara de Asis was founded in 1777.
In 1846, the American flag was raised over Monterey and symbolized the transfer of California to the United States. In 1851, Santa Clara College was established where the old mission used to be. In 1852, Santa Clara was incorporated as a town; it became state-chartered by 1862. The economy centered on family farms since orchards and vegetables were thriving on the fertile soil. In 1905, the first public high-altitude flights by man were made over Santa Clara in gliders designed by John J. Montgomery. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population had reached 5,000 and stayed about the same for many years. The semiconductor industry, which sprouted around 1960, changed the valley forever; little of its agricultural past remains.
