Cupertino, California

Cupertino was named after Arroyo San José de Cupertino (now Stevens Creek). The creek had been named by Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza's cartographer, who named it after Saint Joseph of Cupertino. Saint Joseph (Italian: Giuseppe da Copertino) was born Giuseppe Maria Desa, and was later named after the town of Copertino, where he was born, in the Apulia region of Italy. The name Cupertino first became widely used when John T. Doyle, a San Francisco lawyer, and historian, named his winery on McClellan Road Cupertino. After the turn of the 20th century, Cupertino displaced the former name for the region, which was West Side.

Although the meaning of Copertino is uncertain, it is likely a compound word meaning "little (covered) shelter." The -ino suffix in Italian words indicates "small" or "little", while coprire (past participle coperto) means "to cover"; coperto is derived from the Latin coopertus, which also means "covered shelter".

Cupertino in the 19th century was a small rural village at the crossroads of Stevens Creek Road and Saratoga-Mountain View Road (also known locally as Highway 9; later Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, and then renamed to De Anza Boulevard within Cupertino city limits). For decades, the intersection was dominated on the southeast corner by the R. Cali Brothers Feed Mill,[8] replaced today with the Cali Mill Plaza and City Hall. Back then, it was known as the West Side and was part of Fremont Township. The primary economic activity was fruit agriculture. Almost all of the land within Cupertino's present-day boundaries was covered by prune, plum, apricot, and cherry orchards. A winery on Montebello Ridge overlooking the Cupertino valley region was also in operation by the late 19th century.

Soon railroads, electric railways, and dirt roads traversed the West Side farmlands. Monta Vista, Cupertino's first housing tract, was developed in the mid-20th century as a result of the electric railway's construction.

After World War II, a population and suburban housing boom dramatically shifted the demographics and economy of the Santa Clara Valley, as the "Valley of Heart's Delight" was beginning to transform into "Silicon Valley". In 1954, a rancher, Norman Nathanson, the Cupertino-Monta Vista Improvement Association, and the Fact Finding Committee, began a drive for incorporation. On September 27, 1955, voters approved the incorporation of the city of Cupertino (225 voted "yes" and 183 voted "no"). Cupertino officially became Santa Clara County's 13th city on October 10, 1955. The first city council consisted of Ralph Lindenmayer, Werner Wilson, John Saich, R. Ivan Meyerholz and Norman Nathanson. In fact, there is a residential road in northern Cupertino named after this influential rancher. Lindenmeyer was selected as the first mayor of Cupertino a week after the September 27 election.[9][10]

Cupertino Improvement Association c. 1954

A major milestone in Cupertino's development was the creation by some of the city's largest landowners of VALLCO Business and Industrial Park in the early 1960s. Of the 25 property owners, 17 decided to pool their land to form VALLCO Park, 6 sold to Varian Associates (property later sold to Hewlett-Packard), and two opted for transplanting to farms elsewhere. The name VALLCO was derived from the names of the principal developers: Varian Associates and the Leonard, Lester, Craft, and Orlando families. A neighborhood outdoor shopping center and, much later, the enclosed Vallco Fashion Park, briefly renamed Cupertino Square, were also developed.

De Anza College opened in 1967. The college, named for Juan Bautista De Anza, occupies a 112-acre (0.45 km²) site that was the location of a winery built at the turn of the 20th century, called Beaulieu by its owners, Charles and Ella Baldwin. Their mansion has now become the California History Center. De Anza College now has about 22,000 students.

Housing developments were rapidly constructed in the following years as developers created neighborhoods, including Fairgrove, Garden Gate, Monta Vista, Seven Springs, and other developments. The city is known for its high real estate prices.

63 percent of Cupertino's population was of Asian ancestry in 2010,[12] compared to 32 percent in Santa Clara County overall.[13] Money's Best Places to Live, "America's best small towns", ranked Cupertino as #27 in 2012,[14] the second highest in California. In 2014, Movoto Real Estate ranked Cupertino the seventh "happiest" suburb in the United States, ranking highly in the categories of income, safety, marriage, and education.[15]

Cupertino is located at 37°19′23″N 122°01′55″W (37.3229978, −122.0321823),[4] at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay. The eastern part of the city, located in the Santa Clara Valley, is flat, while the western part of the city slopes into the Santa Cruz Mountains. Cupertino borders San Jose and Santa Clara to the east, Saratoga to the south, Sunnyvale and Los Altos to the north, and Loyola to the northwest.

Several streams run through Cupertino on their way to south San Francisco Bay, including (from north to south): Permanente Creek, Stevens Creek, San Tomas Aquino Creek and its Smith Creek, the Regnart Creek and Prospect Creek tributaries of Calabazas Creek, and Saratoga Creek.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 11.3 square miles (29 km²),[23] 99.99% of it land and 0.01% of it water.

Cupertino is made up of numerous subdivisions, most of them developed since the 1960s. Most of Cupertino's contemporary properties were developed around 1960. The area between Stevens Creek Boulevard, Miller Avenue, Bollinger Road, and Lawrence Expressway contains 224 Eichler homes, built during the 1950s.[24] Two of the newest parts of Cupertino are among its oldest housing tracts. Monta Vista and Rancho Rinconada were developed outside of the city's boundaries in the 1950s and before. Rancho Rinconada was annexed in 1999[25] and the last part of Monta Vista was annexed in 2004.[26] The neighborhood of Seven Springs is at the southwestern tip of Cupertino and was developed in the late 1980s. The newest and most northwestern neighborhood, Oak Valley, borders Rancho San Antonio Park and was developed around the turn of the millennium.

Cupertino is known for its high housing prices as the majority of residential properties are multimillion-dollar homes as of 2017, with the entry-point into a single-family home at about 1.5 million dollars in the Cupertino HS area, and the entry point at 1.7 million dollars in the Monta Vista HS area. Many smaller homes start from high $1 millions, mid-size homes start from low $2 millions, and larger executive homes start from mid $2 millions and can go up to as much as $4 million, as of today. However, townhouses and condos with similar square footage are relatively less expensive, owing mainly to negligible lot sizes and the many common walls and areas. Over the course of eight years since the last 2009 market crash, overall real estate prices have doubled.

Cali Mill Plaza containing the Cypress Hotel and various restaurants

Cali Mill Plaza at night

Cali Mill Plaza marks the traditional center of the city and the historical location of Crossroads. Recently, Main Street Cupertino has been developed and has become Cupertino's downtown.

The headquarters of Apple Inc. on Apple Park Way in Cupertino.

Cupertino is one of many cities that claim to be the "heart" of Silicon Valley, as many semiconductor and computer companies were founded there and in the surrounding areas. The new worldwide headquarters for Apple Inc. is located there in a modern circular complex. It is a 150-acre (610,000 m²) campus between Interstate 280, N Wolfe Rd, E Homestead Rd and along Tantau Ave one mile east of the old campus. The nine properties (50-acre (0.2 km²)) south of Pruneridge Avenue were bought in 2006, the property (100-acre (0.4 km²) north of it in 2010 (from Hewlett-Packard).

On June 7, 2011, Steve Jobs gave a presentation to Cupertino City Council, detailing the architectural design of the new building and its environs.[27] The campus houses 13,000 employees in one central four-story circular building surrounded by extensive landscaping, with parking mainly underground and the rest centralized in a parking structure.

Though Cupertino is home to the headquarters of many high-tech companies such as Apple, very little manufacturing actually takes place in the city. The city's large office parks are primarily dedicated to management and design functions.

Winter morning at the farmers' market at Vallco Shopping Mall

Earlier in its history, Cupertino attributed some of its city income from Vallco Fashion Park, at the time one of the only major indoor shopping malls in the South Bay area. People from the greater South Bay area would come to spend money and contribute to the sales tax. Since then, several other shopping malls have sprung up; Valley Fair (now known as Westfield Valley Fair) in Santa Clara caters to the high-end boutique stores, while the Great Mall in Milpitas in the 1990s opened to the low-priced and bargain retailers. Vallco Fashion Park was hit hard by these developments, as well as by the loss of one of its anchor stores, Emporium.

In 2002, Cupertino had a labor force of 25,780 with an unemployment rate of 4.5%. The unemployment rate for Santa Clara County as a whole was 8.4%.

One of the major employers in the area is the aggregate rock quarry and cement plant in the foothills to the west of Cupertino, the Permanente Quarry. Owned and operated by Lehigh Southwest Cement, it was founded by Henry J. Kaiser as the Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant in 1939. It provided the majority of the cement used in the construction of the Shasta Dam. It supplied the 6 million barrels (950,000 m³) of cement over a nine-mile (14 km)-long conveyor system.[28] The cement plant is the sole reason for the railroad line that runs through the city.

The city is served by an interconnected road system. Two freeways, State Route 85 and Interstate 280, intersect in Cupertino, with multi-lane boulevards with landscaped medians and traffic lights at all major intersections. Streets nearly all have sidewalks, the few exceptions are in unincorporated pockets at the city's edges, which are maintained directly by Santa Clara County.

Cupertino has bike lanes on many of its boulevards, and has an extension of the Stevens Creek Trail through McClellan Ranch Park and Blackberry Farm.[33] Bicycle traffic is heavy usually around morning and noon times around DeAnza College. The VTA has buses running through Cupertino at major arteries. Cupertino's main streets are well lit, while a few older roads towards the Monta Vista High School area are a little dim.

Dedicated on April 30, 2009, Cupertino opened the Mary Avenue Bicycle Footbridge, the first cable-stay bicycle-pedestrian bridge over a California freeway. This bridge connects the north and the south sections of the Stevens Creek Trail. The cost of the bridge project was $14,800,000.[34]

The Union Pacific Railroad operates a branch line track up to the Lehigh Permanente Cement Plant from the mainline at San Jose Diridon Station. It is however strictly for the quarry and very little to no non-quarry traffic runs there.

There is no commuter rail or light rail service in the city. Caltrain commuter rail runs through the cities to the north and east, and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA)'s Mountain View – Winchester light rail line runs to Campbell, California to the south. Bus service is also provided by VTA, and the prospect of a twenty-four-hour bus service on Stevens Creek Boulevard is being studied. Though this corridor (line 23) is one of VTA's most heavily used routes, there is no express service that takes commuters into San Jose, and the quality of service is therefore considered to be relatively poor. VTA recently added a limited bus service to De Anza College from Downtown San Jose via Stevens Creek Blvd (line 323)

Cupertino is landlocked and, like most Bay Area cities, relies on the Port of Oakland for most oceangoing freight.

Passenger and cargo air transportation is available at San Jose International Airport in San Jose. The closest general aviation airport is in Palo Alto; it is known as Palo Alto Airport of Santa Clara County.

Apple Park is the headquarters of Apple, and Apple Campus is its former headquarters.

The Deep Cliff and Blackberry Farm golf courses are located near Monta Vista High School.

The De Anza College has a large enclosed theater called the Flint Center which is the primary venue for performing arts in the West Valley. It is widely used as a music hall by orchestras, such as the California Youth Symphony, as well as numerous professional performers and groups. The center was also home to the unveiling of several Apple products, such as the Macintosh computer and the iMac.[39]

The Fujitsu Planetarium at De Anza College is the largest school Planetarium west of the Rocky Mountains and since its renovation, is one of the most modern in the world.[40]

Rancho San Antonio County Park is a recreational area for hikers and biking activity, located between the Monta Vista area of Cupertino and the border of Los Altos.

Cupertino is twinned with:[41]

• Bhubaneswar, India
• Copertino, Italy
• Hsinchu, Taiwan
• Toyokawa, Japan

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cupertino, California (category)

• Official website
• Cupertino Courier
• Cupertino Historical Society + Museum