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The first people to inhabit the land that became Palo Alto were the Ohlone Tribe. The mild climate and plenty of natural resources in this area provided them with a high quality of life. The bay and marshes provided shellfish and fowl; the valley floor supplied small game and acorns from the thousands of oak trees. San Francisquito Creek and other nearby waterways provided them with fish as well as fruit and berries from the stream banks. Larger game, including deer and grizzly bears, could be caught in the foothills.
Palo Alto’s earliest recorded history dates from 1769, when Gaspar de Portola noted the Ohlone settlement. With his men, he camped alongside El Palo Alto (the tall stick), the tree that today symbolizes both Palo Alto and Stanford University.
Spanish and later Mexican land grants brought new settlers to the area. The Soto/Greer family settled Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito, covering much of what is now Old Palo Alto. Several other ranchos, including Rancho La Purisima Concepcion, purchased by Juana Briones in the mid-1840s, contained land that is part of Palo Alto today
This remains an area of known Indian mounds. A plaque at the intersection of Middlefield Road and Embarcadero Road commemorates the area.
The first actual community was established in 1853 when James Otterson built a roadhouse on the road between San Francisco and San Jose. Mayfield, as it was then known, was located at the present-day intersection of California Avenue and El Camino Real. Mayfield grew into a typical small farm town with one exception: the hills to the west of Mayfield were alive with hundreds of men operating small sawmills, harvesting the Douglas Fir and Redwood trees for lumber for the growing city of San Francisco to the north. These men came down from the hills to Mayfield to spend their money in the many saloons that operated in town.
The railroad from San Francisco to San Jose reached Mayfield in 1863. Wealthy San Franciscans began building large country estates along the tracks. Leland Stanford created his Palo Alto Stock Farm on the southern bank of San Francisquito Creek, where he raised and trained racehorses that set world records in trotting races across the country.
Today, downtown Palo Alto, defined roughly by Alma and Webster streets and Lytton and Forest avenues, is an attractive combination of a small-town and urban ambiance.
The City‘s boundaries extend from San Francisco Bay on the east to the Skyline Ridge of the coastal mountains on the west, with Menlo Park to the north and Mountain View to the south. Palo Alto’s tree-lined streets and historic buildings reflect its California heritage.
Palo Alto became known as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, and its influence, spanning a wide cross-section of culture, healthcare, high-tech, and education, has had a global impact, making Palo Alto known far beyond its borders.
Everything else is just history
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