On his way back from San Francisco in 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza chose sites in the Santa Clara Valley for a mission and a town. José Joaquín Moraga founded the town, the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, on November 29, 1777. It was the first town in Alta California that was neither a mission nor a military post, and it was settled by colonists Anza had led north to grow food for the presidios of San Francisco and Monterey. In 1778 it had 68 people.
The first site lay near what is now the corner of Hobson and San Pedro streets, close to the Guadalupe River, and it flooded. In the 1790s the settlement moved about a mile south and grew up around a plaza that survives today as the Plaza de César Chávez.