Alta California, Stand Up!
Long before Silicon Valley and suburbs, San Jose made history as the first civilian settlement in Alta California.
Founded on November 29, 1777, as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, it was established by Spanish settlers under the direction of the Spanish crown — not as a military outpost or religious mission, but as a civilian farming community meant to support the presidios in San Francisco and Monterey.
Eighteen families, most of them of mixed Indigenous, African, and Spanish descent — known as Californios — laid the groundwork for what would become California’s first pueblo. They built irrigation ditches, adobe homes, and communal farmland, surviving floods, political shifts, and centuries of transformation.
This humble pueblo grew to become the beating heart of the Santa Clara Valley — long before the rise of tech and tract homes. Today, its legacy lives on in the land, the language, and the layered identities of San Jose’s people.
California began here.