Redwood Shores is a waterfront community in

Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...

, along the western shore of

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

on the

San Francisco Peninsula The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Mountain View, south of Palo A ...

San Mateo County San Mateo County ( ), officially the County of San Mateo, is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City is the county seat, and the third most populated city following Daly ...

. Redwood Shores is the home of several major technology companies, including

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

(which relocated its headquarters in 2020),

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

Zuora Zuora is an American enterprise software company headquartered in Redwood City, California that creates and provides software for businesses to launch and manage their subscription-based services. Zuora's applications are designed to automate re ...

Qualys Qualys, Inc. provides cloud security, compliance and related services and is based in Foster City, California. Qualys provides vulnerability management solutions using a "software as a service" (SaaS) model. It has added cloud-based compliance an ...

Crystal Dynamics Crystal Dynamics, Inc. is an American video game developer based in San Mateo, California and part of Embracer Group. The studio developed the '' Gex'', ''Legacy of Kain'', and ''Tomb Raider'' series. Founded in 1992 by Madeline Canepa, Judy L ...

and

Shutterfly Shutterfly, LLC. is an American photography, photography products, and image sharing company, headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company is mainly known for custom photo printing services, including books featuring user-provided ima ...

History

Redwood Shores was built up from

reclaimed land Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lak ...

in the marshes of San Francisco Bay in the 1960s, much like its neighbor, Foster City, but the development almost never came to be. The owner of the land, the

Leslie Salt Company The Leslie Salt Company was a salt-producing company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the current locations of Newark, Hayward and other parts of the bay. Background They produced salt using salt evaporation ponds on the shores of the ...

, filled in soft ground known as "bay mud" formerly used for salt-evaporation ponds, but a significant controversy developed over fears of its susceptibility to serious earthquake damage because the area is between and close to the San Andreas and

Hayward fault The Hayward Fault Zone is a right-lateral strike-slip geologic fault zone capable of generating destructive earthquakes. This fault is about long, situated mainly along the western base of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay. It runs ...

s. The ensuing battle between various government agencies and business interests eventually made Leslie Salt lose interest in the project. As a result, Bank of America became the owner of the development in 1972. It was the home of the Marine World/Africa U.S.A., California theme park from the 1960s to 1986, when the park moved to

Vallejo, California Vallejo ( ; ) is a city in Solano County, California and the second largest city in the North Bay region of the Bay Area. Located on the shores of San Pablo Bay, the city had a population of 126,090 at the 2020 census. Vallejo is home to the ...

(eventually becoming

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (formerly known as Six Flags Marine World, Marine World, The New Marine World Theme Park, and Marine World Africa USA) is a 135-acre (55 ha) animal theme park located in Vallejo, California, off of Interstate 80 ...

). The former location of Marine World has evolved into homes, townhomes, condominiums, apartments, parks, preserved land, and Silicon Valley business parks with headquarters including the former headquarters of

.RCPL:
Redwood Shores: A Short History
' In December 2020, Oracle announced that it had relocated its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores to Austin, Texas.

Geography

Redwood Shores is located roughly halfway between

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and San Jose, and is bordered by Belmont and San Carlos to the southwest.

Foster City Foster City is a city located in San Mateo County, California. The 2020 census put the population at 33,805, an increase of more than 10% over the 2010 census figure of 30,567. Foster City is sometimes considered to be part of Silicon Valley ...

lies to the northwest and

Bair Island Bair Island is a marsh area in Redwood City, California, covering , and includes three islands: Inner, Middle and Outer islands. Bair Island is part of the larger Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It is surrounded by the St ...

to the southeast; both are separated from Redwood Shores by sloughs. To the northeast is

Climate

Economy

Major technology companies maintain headquarters in Redwood Shores, among them

Imperva Imperva is a cyber security software and services company which provides protection to enterprise data and application software. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California. History Imperva, originally named WEBcohort, was founded in 20 ...

and

. The community also includes a branch of

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...

and the headquarters of Relayware. For many years, Redwood Shores was the global headquarters of

, until in December 2020 it announced its relocation to Austin, Texas.

Infrastructure

The Redwood Shores Branch of the Redwood City Public Library serves the community. To the south Redwood Shores is bordered by the San Carlos Airport. Redwood Shores is the setting for college rowing races, including competitions among

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

universities.

Education

The community of Redwood Shores is served by the

Belmont – Redwood Shores School District Belmont – Redwood Shores School District (BRSSD) is a K8 school district in California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approx ...

, which maintains the two schools located in Redwood Shores and five more schools in Belmont.

Wildlife

Pacific harbor seals have occasionally been spotted in the waterways and lagoons around Redwood Shores. The areas in and around the community are home to a variety of wildlife, including

raccoons The raccoon ( or , ''Procyon lotor''), sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of , and a body weight of . ...

skunks Skunks are mammals in the family Mephitidae. They are known for their ability to spray a liquid with a strong, unpleasant scent from their anal glands. Different species of skunk vary in appearance from black-and-white to brown, cream or ginge ...

ducks Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form t ...

geese A goose (plural, : geese) is a bird of any of several waterfowl species in the family (biology), family Anatidae. This group comprises the genera ''Anser (bird), Anser'' (the grey geese and white geese) and ''Branta'' (the black geese). Some o ...

egrets Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same buil ...

great blue herons The great blue heron (''Ardea herodias'') is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos Isl ...

, clapper rails, harvest field mice,

stingrays Stingrays are a group of sea rays, which are cartilaginous fish related to sharks. They are classified in the suborder Myliobatoidei of the order Myliobatiformes and consist of eight families: Hexatrygonidae (sixgill stingray), Plesiobatidae (d ...

jellyfish Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...

, and many other species.

Canada geese The Canada goose (''Branta canadensis''), or Canadian goose, is a large wild goose with a black head and neck, white cheeks, white under its chin, and a brown body. It is native to the arctic and temperate regions of North America, and it is o ...

pose a nuisance and the community is actively working on reducing their presence.

References

External links

Redwood City Official Website

RSCA Official Website
{{Authority control Neighborhoods in San Mateo County, California Redwood City, California Populated coastal places in California