Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in the city of Santa Clara, California.

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History

The Tamien tribe of the Ohlone nation of Indigenous Californians have inhabited the area for thousands of years.

Spanish Period

The first European to visit the valley was José Francisco Ortega in 1769. The Spanish began to colonize California with 21 missions and the Mission Santa Clara de Asis was founded in 1777.

Mexican Period

The Battle of Santa Clara, one of the last battles of the Conquest of California, was fought between a contingent of Californios, led by Francisco Sánchez, against the invading American forces.

American Period

In 1851, Santa Clara College was established on the grounds of the original Mission. In 1852, Santa Clara was incorporated as a town; it became state-chartered by 1862.

For the next century, the economy centered on agriculture since orchards and vegetables were thriving in the fertile soil. By the beginning of the 20th century, the population had reached 5,000 and stayed about the same for many years.

In 1905, the first public high-altitude flights by humans were made over Santa Clara in gliders designed by John J. Montgomery. The semiconductor industry, which sprouted around 1960, changed the city and surrounding Valley of Heart's Delight; little of its agricultural past remains.

Santa Clara's first medical hospital was built in 1963. This structure, on Kiely Boulevard, was replaced in 2007 with a new Kaiser Permanente medical center located on Lawrence Expressway at Homestead Road.

Santa Clara was also home to a major mental health facility, Agnews State Hospital. According to the National Park Service, more than 100 persons were killed at this site in the 1906 earthquake. The site is the former home to Sun Microsystems and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1963, Santa Clara City Council voted to knock down the eight-block grid of Downtown Santa Clara, in order to receive federal funding for urban renewal.

Santa Clara is now located in the center of Silicon Valley and is home to the headquarters of companies such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia.

Since 2017, there has been a grassroots movement to rebuild Santa Clara's historic downtown.