Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area around San Jose was inhabited by the Ohlone people. San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777, as the Pueblo of San José de Guadalupe, the first civilian town founded in Spanish Alta California.When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose became the state’s first capital. Following World War II, San Jose experienced an economic boom, with a rapid population growth and aggressive annexation of nearby cities and communities carried out in the 1950s and 60s. The rapid growth of the high-technology and electronics industries further accelerated the transition from an agricultural center to an urbanized metropolitan area. Results of the 1990 U.S. Census indicated that San Jose had officially surpassed San Francisco as the most populous city in Northern California.By the 1990s, San Jose and the rest of Silicon Valley had become the global center for the high tech and internet industries.
San Jose is considered to be a global city,notable for its affluenceand high cost of living. San Jose’s location within the booming high tech industry, as a cultural, political, and economic center has earned the city the nickname “Capital of Silicon Valley”. San Jose is one of the wealthiest major cities in the United States and the world, and has the third highest GDP per capita in the world (after Zurich, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway), according to the Brookings Institute. With a median home price of $1,085,000,San Jose has the most expensive housing market in the country and the fifth most expensive housing market in the world, according to the 2017 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. Major global tech companies including Cisco Systems, eBay, Adobe Systems, PayPal, Brocade, Samsung, Acer, and Western Digital maintain their headquarters in San Jose, in the center of Silicon Valley.
