A HISTORY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW
In the mid-1700s, Spanish explorers and missionaries arrive in California to find the Ohlone Indians and the Posolmi Settlement, located at present-day Moffett Field.
1842 – An 8,800-acre Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas is granted to Francisco Estrada and his wife, Inez Castro. This area would become Sunnyvale and Mountain View.
A 1,700-acre land grant of Rancho Posolmi, is granted to local Native American Lupe Ynigo in 1844. This area became Moffett Field.
1850 – A stage coach service begins near Grant Road and El Camino Real becoming the center of commerce in the Mountain View.
1854 – Jacob Shumway, store keeper, is credited with the naming of Mountain View.
1860s – Commerce began to grow even stronger. Henry Rengstorff, John G. Jagels and Charles Guth, build docks and warehouses to ship the region’s produce and supplies.
In 1888, a train depot is built along what is now Evelyn Avenue. The Castro family acquired the rights to their own train station.
1902 – Mountain View’s population has risen above 600 and modern improvements, including a telephone service and municipal water, are made throughout the city.
1905 – Farmers and Merchants Bank opens on Villa and Castro Streets. In 1926 it becomes a branch of Bank of Italy, later becoming Bank of America.
1909 – Town hall, the library and the city jail are placed on the southwest corner of California and Castro Street.
1911 – Minton Lumber Co. becomes one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the city benefiting from the booming construction of the city.
1915 – California Supply Co., a pickle-packing plant on Franklin and Villa Streets, opens. Demolished in 1963, the site later becomes the Police and Fire Administration Building.
1920 – Hoping to create a major Bay Area port, South Shore Port Co. dredges slough at the old Jagels Landing. This begins a ferry and freight service to San Francisco in 1923.
The elaborate port project includes an amusement park and large saltwater swimming pool called Kingsport Plunge that opens in 1925. The venture fails and the company declares bankruptcy in 1927.
1924 – The city’s first high school had opened on El Camino in 1902. In 1924 a new school designed by noted architect William Weeks opens on Castro Street.
1930 – Feb. 20, 1931, President Hoover signs legislation approve the development on the West Coast Air Base in Sunnyvale. In 1933 Moffett Field Naval Air Station opens.
1937 – Bayshore Highway (101) opens on the Peninsula after 13 years of construction at a cost of $7 million.
1939 – Flight research begins at the Ames Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA).
1951 – Ferry-Morse Seed Co. opens plant on Evelyn and Highway 237. The company relocates to Modesto in 1985 and property is developed into a high technology business park.
1953 – Sylvania Electronics Corp. and General Telephone & Electronics (GTE) merge in the late 1950s and becomes one Mountain View’s largest employers.
1956 – William Shockley opens Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View. Employees from the Lab break away to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. The Fairchild founders later go on to create a shift in technology that redefined business in the 1970s.
1957 – A 50-acre retail center begins after the construction of Sears Department Store on San Antonio Road. After expanding in the ’60s the center is demolished and replaced by a 125,000-square-foot Wal-Mart.
1959 – Recreation Center Park opens only to later be renamed Rengstorff Park in 1970.
1961 – Voters approve formation of a new hospital district in 1956 and the $7.3 million bonds to finance the project in 1957. The El Camino Hospital is completed in September 1961.
Foothill College opens its new campus in Los Altos Hills. The college district formed in 1957 and by 1958 the college had first been housed in the former Highway School on El Camino.
1966 – Mayfield Mall opens. One of the first completely enclosed, carpeted shopping malls in Northern California. The 500,000-square-foot mall closes and later becomes GOOGLE X (“X”)
1983 – Shoreline Park and Golf Course opens. The 700-acre park is created in place of what used to be a San Francisco garbage dump. The amphitheater is completed in 1986 and now accommodates over 20,000 people.
1991 – Moffett Naval Air Station closes.
$44.5 million City Civic Center and Center of Performing Arts is completed.
Netscape Communications, an Internet service provider best known for its browser, is founded.
1994 – Yahoo! Is Founded.
1995 -Netscape is founded in offices inside the HP Campus: 466 Ellis Street, Mountain View
1997 – New public library located on Franklin Street opens.
1999 – VTA opened the Tasman West light-rail project, which extends trains from Santa Clara to downtown Mountain View.
2002 – The Computer History Museum whose mission is the preservation of computing history, moves to Mountain View.