Silicon Valley was once called "The Valley Of Heart's Delight" - did you know that? Many people don't even realize that Silicon Valley is roughly the same as Santa Clara County (or the San Jose area)...with some overlap. So there are a lot of unknowns here in the Santa Clara Valley.
But if you'd like to know more about the last hundred or so years, the information is right here on this blog! Please have a peek at the Valley of Hearts Delight page. Prunes will never look the same to you!
Silicon Valley, a region known for high tech (semiconductors, computers, biotech among them), mostly abides within Santa Clara County. This is at the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. The weather is mild - it's a subtropical climate and the palm and redwood trees will back that up. At one time, during the orchard heyday, it came to be known as The Valley of the Heart's Delight. Eventually the fruit and nut trees gave way to housing in the post World War II boom, and as high tech slowly took over as the regional industry, the moniker changed to Silicon Valley.
The people who live here love many things about the San Jose area. The climate, of course, cannot be beat. (Just yesterday, February 17th, our "high" was 77 degrees.) The level of education is high, the population delightfully diverse, and crime is low. Add to that a close proximity to San Francisco (an hour north by car or train), Berkeley and Oakland (ditto the time up the East Bay by car or BART), the beach at Santa Cruz (about a half hour), Monterey/Carmel (90 minutes), etc. You can drive to Napa or Sonoma for wine tasting - or you could do it within a couple of miles of the airport at the J Lohr Wine Tasting Room just off The Alameda. Of course, our hills have plenty of wineries too, and they are found closer in (Los Gatos and Cupertino and the east foothills of San Jose). In other words, there are a lot of reasons why "The Valley of Heart's Delight" still applies.
We love living here.
The view in the photo, above, by the way is from the top of Harwood Road in Los Gatos - actually at the very edge of Los Gatos, close to the Cambrian Park and Almaden Valley areas of San Jose. I live at the base of this hill and like to joke that when my house grows up, it will get an acre of land and have a great view. When I am feeling particularly hearty, I will climb to the top of this hill. The view makes it worthwhile!
