Glossary

The words you’ll hear around San Jose — places, history, weather and local ways, explained

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Architecture

Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph: The domed downtown church on the site of San Jose’s first parish of 1803, named for the city’s patron, Saint Joseph.
Diridon Station: San Jose’s brick railroad depot of 1935 at 65 Cahill Street, where Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE and VTA light rail meet.
Electric light tower: A 237-foot iron tower of arc lights built over Santa Clara and Market streets in 1881 to light downtown like a full moon. It fell in a 1915 storm.
Hayes Mansion: A Mission Revival mansion of the early 1900s in Edenvale, built for a family of fruit growers and newspaper publishers, now a hotel.
Hotel De Anza: A ten-story Art Deco hotel on West Santa Clara Street from 1931, one of the few Zig Zag Moderne buildings in San Jose.
Peralta Adobe: A two-room adobe from 1797 on San Pedro Square, the oldest building in San Jose and the city’s Historic Landmark No. 1.
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum: An Egyptian-style museum in the Rose Garden district holding the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts on display in the western United States.
Winchester Mystery House: Sarah Winchester’s rambling Victorian mansion in West San Jose, open to visitors since 1923 and surrounded by legends that historians have largely set aside.

Climate & Weather

Mediterranean climate: Warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters, with about 298 sunny days a year and a downtown sheltered from rain by the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Events

Christmas in the Park: San Jose’s free holiday display in the Plaza de César Chávez, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, with hundreds of decorated trees.
Cinequest: San Jose’s independent film festival, held each March since 1990, which mixes premieres with Silicon Valley technology.
Obon in Japantown: Japantown’s summer festival every July, honoring the spirits of ancestors with Bon Odori dancing in the streets.

History & People

Capital of Silicon Valley: San Jose’s official motto since 1988, for the city at the heart of the valley named after the silicon chip.
Charles “Doc” Herrold: The San Jose teacher whose radio station, on the air from 1909 as “San Jose calling,” is counted among the first broadcasting stations in the world.
Dutch Hamann: Anthony P. “Dutch” Hamann, San Jose’s city manager from 1950 to 1969, whose annexations turned a farm town into a sprawling city.
First state capital: San Jose was California’s capital from December 1849 to 1851, when the first sessions of the Legislature, nicknamed the Legislature of a Thousand Drinks, met here.
New Almaden: The quicksilver mines in the hills of South San Jose, worked from 1847 to 1976 and named after the ancient mercury mine of Almadén in Spain.
Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe: The farming town founded on November 29, 1777, the first civilian settlement in Spanish California, and the start of the city of San Jose.
Tamien: The Ohlone people of the Santa Clara Valley, whose villages lined its creeks long before the pueblo was founded.
Thomas Fallon: The Irish-born captain who raised the U.S. flag over San Jose in July 1846, later mayor, and still a disputed figure in the city’s memory.
Valley of Heart’s Delight: The old nickname for the Santa Clara Valley when it was covered in orchards of prunes, apricots and cherries, before it became Silicon Valley.

Local Life & Customs

King & Story: The East Side intersection of King and Story roads, a heart of Latino San Jose and, in the 1980s, of its lowrider culture.
Mission San José (not in San Jose): A common mix-up: San Jose grew from a civilian pueblo, not a mission. Mission San José is about 20 miles north, in Fremont.
San Jose Earthquakes: San Jose’s Major League Soccer club, a founding member of the league in 1996 and two-time MLS Cup champion.
Sikh Gurdwara of San Jose: A large Sikh temple in the Evergreen foothills, founded in 1984 and described as the largest gurdwara outside India.
The Shark Tank: The local nickname for SAP Center, the downtown arena where the NHL’s San Jose Sharks have played since 1993.

Nature & Wildlife

Alum Rock Park: A canyon park of about 720 acres in the East Side foothills, established in 1872 as California’s oldest municipal park.
Coyote Creek: The long “creek” that is really a river, flowing from the Diablo Range through Coyote Valley and the east edge of downtown to the Bay.
Coyote Valley: About 7,400 acres of farms and open space at San Jose’s southern edge, a wildlife corridor between the Diablo Range and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge: The wildlife refuge of salt marsh, mudflats and salt ponds around the south Bay, created in 1974 as the first urban national wildlife refuge.
Earthquake faults: San Jose sits between the San Andreas and Calaveras faults and feels a moderate earthquake once or twice in a typical year.
Guadalupe River: The river that runs north through downtown San Jose to the Bay at Alviso, named by the Anza expedition in 1776, where salmon and a mammoth have both been found.
Japanese Friendship Garden: A six-acre walled garden in Kelley Park, modeled on Korakuen in Okayama, Japan, San Jose’s sister city since 1957.
Los Gatos Creek: A 24-mile creek from the Santa Cruz Mountains to downtown San Jose, named for the mountain lions of Rancho Rinconada de Los Gatos.
San Jose Municipal Rose Garden: A five-and-a-half-acre garden of roses planted on an old prune orchard in 1927, named America’s Best Rose Garden in 2010.

Places

Almaden Valley: A valley neighborhood in South San Jose between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Teresa Hills, named for its quicksilver mines.
Alviso: San Jose’s only waterfront district, an old bayside port town at the mouth of the Guadalupe River, joined to the city in 1968.
History Park: History San José’s outdoor museum in Kelley Park: about 14 acres of original and replica homes, shops and landmarks, with paved streets and running trolleys.
Japantown (Nihonmachi): San Jose’s historic Japanese American district north of downtown, one of only three Japantowns left in the United States.
Kelley Park: A 156-acre city park on Coyote Creek that holds Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, the Japanese Friendship Garden and History Park.
Lick Observatory: The University of California’s observatory atop Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, the world’s first permanently occupied mountaintop observatory.
Little Portugal: The historic Portuguese American neighborhood on East Santa Clara Street, centered on the Five Wounds Portuguese National Church.
Little Saigon: The Vietnamese American business district on Story Road in East San Jose, officially recognized by the city in 2007.
Mayfair: A historic Mexican American neighborhood of East San Jose, once nicknamed Sal Si Puedes, and a center of the Chicano movement.
Plaza de César Chávez: The downtown plaza laid out in 1797 as the pueblo’s main square, described as the oldest public space in Northern California.
Rose Garden: A historic district near The Alameda, named for the Municipal Rose Garden and home to Rosicrucian Park and Victorian and storybook-style houses.
San José: The largest city in the Bay Area and Northern California, founded in 1777 as the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe and now the county seat of Santa Clara County.
San José State University: The downtown university that began in 1857 as California’s first normal school, the oldest public university in the western United States.
Santana Row: A shopping, dining and residential district on Stevens Creek Boulevard in West San Jose, opened in the early 2000s.
Willow Glen: A leafy district southwest of downtown, once its own city, with a walkable downtown along Lincoln Avenue.