San Jose, California

1939Hewlett-Packard Founded: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded their electronics company in a small garage in nearby Palo Alto, creating the prototype for the Silicon Valley startup and launching the region's technology revolution.

1777First Civilian Settlement in California: Spanish colonists established El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe as California's first civilian town, serving as an agricultural community to supply the nearby military presidios.

1969Silicon Valley Named: Journalist Don Hoefler coined the term 'Silicon Valley' to describe the concentration of semiconductor and technology companies centered around San Jose, giving a name to the most consequential tech hub in history.

19061906 Earthquake Strikes San Jose: The massive earthquake that devastated San Francisco also severely damaged San Jose, destroying the county courthouse and many downtown buildings. The disaster prompted a rebuilding that modernized the city.

1849San Jose Becomes First State Capital: When California achieved statehood, San Jose served as the first state capital. The legislature met there for two sessions before moving to Vallejo, then Sacramento.

1960Suburban Explosion: Under City Manager Dutch Hamann's aggressive annexation policy, San Jose grew from 17 to 137 square miles in a decade, swallowing orchards and farmland to become the Bay Area's largest city by land area.

1976Apple Computer Founded: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in Los Altos, near San Jose, creating the personal computer revolution that would transform daily life worldwide.

1943IBM Opens San Jose Lab: IBM established its first West Coast research laboratory in San Jose. The lab later invented the hard disk drive and DRAM memory, foundational technologies of the computing age.

2000Dot-Com Bust: The collapse of the dot-com bubble devastated Silicon Valley's economy, wiping out hundreds of startups and sending unemployment soaring in San Jose.

2017Coyote Creek Flood: Heavy rains caused Coyote Creek to overflow, flooding thousands of homes in downtown San Jose and displacing 14,000 residents in the worst flooding the city had seen in decades.