History of San Jose, California

This article covers the history of San Jose, California, the third largest city in the state, and the largest of all cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California, with a population of 982,765.

For thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers, the area now known as San Jose was inhabited by several groups of Ohlone Native Americans. Permanent European presence in the area came with the 1770 founding of the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo by Gaspar de Portolà and Junípero Serra, about sixty miles (100 km) to the south. Don Pedro Fages, the military governor at Monterey, passed through the area on his 1770 and 1772 expeditions to explore the East Bay and Sacramento River Delta.

Late in 1775, Juan Bautista de Anza led the first overland expedition to bring colonists from New Spain (Mexico) to California and to locate sites for two missions, one presidio, and one pueblo (town). He left the colonists at Monterey in 1776, and explored north with a small group. He selected the sites of the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco; on his way back to Monterey, he sited Mission Santa Clara de Asís and the pueblo San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley. Anza returned to Mexico City before any of the settlements were actually founded, but his name lives on in many buildings and street names.