ZIP Code 95050

Santa Clara (; Spanish for "Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Santa Clara is located in the center of Silicon Valley and is home to the headquarters of companies such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia. It is also home to Santa Clara University, the oldest university in California, and Levi's Stadium, the home of the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers. 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. 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. In 1905, the first public high-altitude flights by humans were made over Santa Clara in gliders designed by John J. Montgomery. 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. There are some significant biological resources within the city including habitat for the burrowing owl, a species of special concern in California due to reduction in habitat from urban development during the latter 20th century.

History

The Tamien tribe of the Ohlone nation of Indigenous Californians have inhabited the area for thousands of years. The Spanish began to colonize California with 21 missions and the Mission Santa Clara de Asis was founded in 1777. In 1852, Santa Clara was incorporated as a town; it became state-chartered by 1862. 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. Since 2017, there has been a grassroots movement to rebuild Santa Clara's historic downtown. The site is the former home to Sun Microsystems and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The city'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. According to the National Park Service, more than 100 persons were killed at this site in the 1906 earthquake. The town was also home to a major mental health facility, Agnews State Hospital, which is listed on the National register of historic Places. In 1963, Santa Claus voted to knock down the eight-block grid of Downtown Santa Clara, in order to receive federal funding for urban renewal. It is now home to the Santa Clara Museum of Art and Science. The museum is located on the corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Santa Clara Street.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city covers an area of 18.4 square miles (48 km²) The city is drained by three seasonal creeks, all of which empty into the southern portion of San Francisco Bay. There are some significant biological resources within the city including habitat for the burrowing owl, a species of special concern in California due to reduction in habitat from urban development during the latter 20th century. Coyotes have also become active in the area in recent years. Most of the annual rainfall comes in the winter months; the summer months are generally rainless. The average daily temperatures in July range from 82 °F (28 °C) to 53 °C (12 °C). Winters are mild, with the mean daily temperature in January ranging from 58 °F [14 °C] to 38°F (3 °C), with the average daily temperature for the whole of July being 82°F [28°C] and the average for January being 53°F  (12°C) and the mean for the entire month of July is 82°C (28°F). The average annual rainfall in the city is 2.5 inches (48mm) and most of it comes in winter months. The city has a population of 2.2 million people (2.7% of the U.S. total population) and is located in the Central Coast region of California. It is located on the eastern edge of the Bay Area.

Demographics

The 2010 United States Census reported that Santa Clara had a population of 116,468. The ethnic makeup of the city was 52,359 (45.0%) White, 3,154 (2.7%) African American, 579 (0.5%) Native American, 43,889 (37.7) Asian (13.6%) and 6,212 (5.3%) from two or more races. 14.6% of Santa Clara's population was of Mexican ancestry. There were 45,147 housing units at an average density of 2,452.7 per square mile (947.0/km²), of which 19,747 were owner-occupied, and 23,274 (54.1%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 4.6%. 53,694 people (46.1% of the population) lived in owner- occupied housing units and 59,578 people (51.2%) lived in rental housing units. The average household size was 2.63. There were 27,936 families (64.9% of all households); the average family size was 3.18. The median age was 34.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 102.0 males. For every100 females age 18 and over,there were 100.9 males. The city's population distribution showed the age distribution of the age of 19-24 was 12,511 people (10.7%), aged 18 to 24, 41,876 people (36.0) aged 25 to 44, 25,628 people (22.0%), and 11,679 people (10.0%).

Economy

Santa Clara owns and operates an electric utility called Silicon Valley Power. The going rate for electricity in Santa Clara is considerably cheaper than that offered by Northern California's dominant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Affymetrix, Agilent Technologies, Applied Materials, Arista Networks, Aruba, Auditoria.AI, Brillio, Chegg, Cloudera, Coherent, FileMaker, Hortonworks, Infoblox, Intel, Intevac, Marvell, McAfee, Move inc, National Semiconductor, Nvidia, OmniVision, Ooyala, Palo Alto Networks, Rovi, ServiceNow, Silicon Valley Bank, Trident Microsystems and Veritas Technologies are among the companies headquartered in the city. The United States office of Namco Bandai Games is in Santa Santa Clara. The city's 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in theCity are: AMD, Intel and McAfee. According to the city's 2016 Comprehensive Annual financial Report, top employers are: Intel, Intel, McAfee and Move inc. Santa Clara has a population of 2.2 million. The average household income in the City of Santa Clara in 2013 was $62,000. The City of San Jose has a median household income of $50,000, the lowest in the state of California and the highest in the U.S. in 2013. The median household salary in San Jose in 2012 was $60,000; the average household wage in the State of California was $55,500.

Government

The current mayor of Santa Clara is Lisa Gillmor. The city is part of California's 17th congressional district for the U.S. House of Representatives. In the California Legislature, the city is represented in the Senate by Aisha Wahab (D) and in the Assembly by Alex Lee (D). The city operates the Santa Clara City Library, which is not part of theSanta Clara County Library District. It is located in the city's downtown area, near the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Jose Bay Area. The Santa Clara River runs through the center of the city, and the city has a small park in the middle of the town. It was named after Santa Clara, California, where the city was founded in 17th century. The town's name is derived from Santa Clara County, which was once known as Santa Clara Township. The current name is a contraction of "Santa Clara" and "Clara" which means "city" or "town" in Spanish. It also means "center" in English and "clarence" in Portuguese. It has been known as "The City of the Stars" since the 19th century, when it was founded by a group of merchants. The name was later changed to "The Center of the City" in honor of the center's historical significance. It now has a name of "The Santa Clara Center for the Arts and Sciences" and is based in the downtown area of the same name. The City's name was also used as the name of a school in the early 1900s.

Education

Santa Clara Unified School District serves Santa Clara and small portions of Sunnyvale and North San Jose. Many of the schools are named for former farmers, ranchers, and other notable Santa Clara residents. Private schools in Santa Clara include the Saint Clare School (the oldest elementary school in California) and Granada Islamic School (Islamic school, grades K-12) Santa Clara University (private Jesuit university), Mission College (public community college), UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley (private Baptist college) and Golden State Baptist College are among the colleges in the city. The city is home to nineteen K8, elementary, and high schools. A small part of the city however is served by Cupertino High School and its feeder schools in the nearby town of its namesake. It is also home to Santa Clara High School, Buchser Middle School, and Mission Early College High School. It also has a number of high schools, including Santa Clara Elementary, Santa Clara Middle, and Santa Clara high. It has a large number of private schools as well, including Saint Clare Elementary, Saint Clare High, and Saint Clare Middle School. The school district also has several private schools, such as the St. Clare School for Girls, which is the oldest private school for girls in the state of California. It was founded in 1881. It's the oldest school in the U.S. to educate girls in grades 7-12. The district has a high school that opened in the 1970s. The high school was named after Santa Clara's first female mayor, who died in 1998.

Culture

The Santa Clara Broncos are the Division I NCAA athletic programs of Santa Clara University. The San Francisco 49ers NFL football team has its headquarters and practice facilities in Santa Clara. Santa Clara is also home to California's Great America, an amusement park currently operated by Cedar Fair, L.P. The Our Lady of Peace Shrine is notable for its 32-foot-tall (9.8 m) statue which is visible from Highway 101. The Mission City Center for Performing Arts is the city's venue for theatrical productions and entertainment. The George F. Haines International Swim Center is home and host to numerous local, regional, and international competitive swimming matches. The organization runs and operates a winter guard, an indoor percussion ensemble, and two drum and bugle corps, all of which compete across the country every year. All four ensembles have been very successful competitively, especially the two drum corps, one of which has won 6 Open Class titles and the other 7 World Class titles. The latter is the only drum corps that has made finals every year since the beginning of Drum Corps International. The Santa Clara Vanguard, a competitive marching music organization, has been headquartered inSanta Clara since its inception. On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, the 49ers announced their intention to move the team to Santa Clara in time for the fall 2014 season, after negotiations failed with the city of San Francisco to build a new stadium. The city is home to the Intel Museum, Triton Museum of Art, and the Harris Lass historical house.

Transportation

Santa Clara is located adjacent to San Jose International Airport. The city is served by Amtrak's Capitol Corridor train and the Altamont Corridor Express. It is also served by the VTA light rail system, which operates four stations: Reamwood station, Old Ironsides station, Great America station, and Lick Mill station. Santa Clara is home to the Santa Clara International Airport, which is located just south of the city's downtown area. The airport is located on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area, near San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Santa Clara Airport is on the western edge of San Francisco, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, and is near the San Diego and San Francisco border. The San Francisco-San Diego corridor runs through the city, and the city also has a rail link with San Francisco. The Amtrak Capitol Corridor and Altamonte Corridor Express are both served by Santa Clara. The VTA Light Rail system operates the Ream Wood station and the Lick Mills station, which are both located near the airport. It also operates the Great America and Santa Clara stations, both of which are served by Caltrain, as well as the Caltrain Santa Clara station. It has a station at Santa Clara that is part of Amtrak's Santa Clara-San Francisco line. The station is also part of the Amtrak San Francisco line, which runs from San Francisco to San Francisco via San Francisco on the Bay Area Line and San Jose to Los Angeles on the East Coast.

Sister cities

As of May 2015, Santa Clara has three sister cities: Coimbra, Portugal, Izumo, Shimane, Japan, and Limerick, Ireland. Santa Clara's sister cities are CoimbRA, Portugal; Izumo and Shimane; and Limerick and Santa Clara. The city also has a sister city in Dublin, Ireland, which is part of the Dublin Sister City Program. The sister city program was established in the 1960s. The Santa Clara Sister City program was created to help develop the city's tourism potential. It was first established in 1966. It has since grown to become one of the largest in the United States. It also has sister cities in Ireland, Portugal and Japan, as well as in the U.S. and Canada. It is also sister to the University of California, San Francisco, and the City of Santa Clara, which was founded in 1968. The town has three colleges: Santa Clara University, Santa Cruz University, and San Francisco State University. The university also has two colleges in Santa Clara and San Jose, California, which were founded in the 1970s and 1980s. It had a sister town in Ireland in Limerick in the 1990s and in 1998, it had one in Ireland and one in Portugal. In the 2000s, the city also had sister cities with the cities of Limerick and San Diego, and in 2010, it was sister to San Francisco and San Mateo, California. In 2010, the town had three sister towns with the city of San Francisco.

Air Quality, Water Quality, Superfund Sites & UV Index

The Air Quality index is in Santa Clara, Santa Clara County, California = 11.8. These Air Quality index is based on annual reports from the EPA. Higher values are better (100=best). The number of ozone alert days is used as an indicator of air quality, as are the amounts of seven pollutants including particulates, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, and volatile organic chemicals. The Water Quality Index is 40. A measure of the quality of an area’s water supply as rated by the EPA. Higher values are better (100=best). The EPA has a complex method of measuring the watershed quality, using 15 indicators such as pollutants, turbidity, sediments, and toxic discharges. The Superfund Sites Index is 10. Higher is better (100=best). Based upon the number and impact of EPA Superfund pollution sites in the county, including spending on the cleanup efforts. The UV Index in Santa Clara = 5.1 and is a measure of an area's exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays. This is most often a combination of sunny weather, altitude, and latitude. The UV Index has been defined by the WHO (www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/radiation-the-ultraviolet-(uv)-index) and is uniform worldwide.

Employed

The most recent city population of 127,647 individuals with a median age of 37.4 age the population grows by 10.37% in Santa Clara, Santa Clara County, California population since 2000 and are distributed over a density of 6,982 residents per square mile of area (2,697/km²). There are average 2.62 people per household in the 42,034 households with an average household income of $83,547 a year. The unemployment rate in Alabama is 10.90% of the available work force and has dropped -6.14% over the most recent 12-month period and the projected change in job supply over the next decade based on migration patterns, economic growth, and other factors will increase by 16.82%. The number of physicians in Santa Clara per 100,000 population = 263.9.

Weather

The annual rainfall in Santa Clara = 14 inches and the annual snowfall = 0 inches. The annual number of days with measurable precipitation (over .01 inch) = 54. The average number of days per year that are predominantly sunny = 261. 82 degrees Fahrenheit is the average daily high temperature for the month of July and 38.7 degrees Fahrenheit is the average daily low temperature for the month of January. The Comfort Index (higher=better) is 51, where higher values mean a more pleasant climate. The Comfort Index measure recognizes that humidity by itself isn't the problem. (Have you noticed nobody ever complains about the weather being 'cold and humid?) It's in the summertime that we notice the humidity the most, when it's hot and muggy. Our Comfort Index uses a combination of afternoon summer temperature and humidity to closely predict the effect that the humidity will have on people.

Median Home Cost

The percentage of housing units in Santa Clara, Santa Clara County, California which are owned by the occupant = 43.07%. A housing unit is a house, apartment, mobile home, or room occupied as separate living quarters. The average age of homes = 40 years with median home cost = $477,380 and home appreciation of -10.50%. This is the value of the years most recent home sales data. Its important to note that this is not the average (or arithmetic mean). The median home price is the middle value when you arrange all the sales prices of homes from lowest to highest. This is a better indicator than the average, because the median is not changed as much by a few unusually high or low values. The property tax rate of $5.62 shown here is the rate per $1,000 of home value. If for simplification for example the tax rate is $14.00 and the home value is $250,000, the property tax would be $14.00 x ($250,000/1000), or $3500. This is the 'effective' tax rate.

Study

The local school district spends $5,145 per student. There are 22.1 students for each teacher in the school, 2177 students for each Librarian and 715 students for each Counselor. 7.71% of the area’s population over the age of 25 with an Associate Degree or other 2-year college degree, 25.77% with a master’s degree, Ph.D. or other advanced college degree and 17.01% with high school diplomas or high school equivalency degrees (GEDs).