Santa Teresa is a district of San Jose, California, United States, located in South San Jose. Founded in 1834, Santa Teresa was originally established as

Rancho Santa Teresa Rancho Santa Teresa was a Mexican land grant in present-day Santa Clara County, California given in 1834 by Governor José Figueroa to José Joaquín Bernal. The grant extended west from Coyote Creek to the Santa Teresa Hills, and included prese ...

by the Bernal family, a prominent

Californio Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...

clan. Today, Santa Teresa is largely a residential area, but also home to numerous Silicon Valley tech campuses. Santa Teresa is the southernmost urban district of San Jose, bordering the largely protected Coyote Valley to its south. It is bound by the

Santa Teresa Hills The Santa Teresa Hills are a range of mountains in Santa Clara County, California, located primarily in the city of San Jose. They separate the San Jose neighborhoods of Almaden Valley to the west and Santa Teresa to the east. Geography The ra ...

to its west and the

Bayshore Freeway The Bayshore Freeway is a part of U.S. Route 101 (US 101) in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. It runs along the west shore of the San Francisco Bay, connecting San Jose with San Francisco. Within the city of San Fran ...

(101) to its east.

History

Don Bruno Bernal (Rancho Santa Teresa en S

Santa Teresa was founded in 1834 as

, a rancho grant given by Governor José Figueroa to Don

José Joaquín Bernal José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: Spanish ; Portuguese (or ). In French, the name ''José'', pronounced , is an old vernacul ...

, a retired soldier who came to

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...

as part of the De Anza Expedition in 1776.Santa Clara County Parks: Bernal-Gulnac-Joice Ranch
/ref> Prior to receiving the rancho grant, José Joaquín Bernal had already settled in the area since 1826. Bernal named the area Santa Teresa after attributing the healing waters of the Santa Teresa Spring to Saint Teresa of Ávila, the 16th century Spanish saint.Friends of Santa Teresa Park - Newsletter Summer 2020
/ref> Rancho Santa Teresa quickly became an important center for

life in the southern Santa Clara Valley, attracting

vaquero The ''vaquero'' (; pt, vaqueiro, , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became t ...

s and their families from the region with regular ''fiestas'' featuring Fandango dancing and large feasts. Following the death of Don José Joaquín, his second son, Don Bruno Bernal, takes over the rancho's administration, while his two brothers, Agustín and Juan Pablo, sought businesses ventures outside of Santa Teresa. By the time of the

California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...

, Agustín and Juan Pablo were selling their cattle to miners in Gold Country, while Bruno managed affairs at home. Don Bruno became one of the region's most prominent public figures and ran the rancho until his death in 1863. Today, a part of the original rancho is preserved as the Rancho Santa Teresa Historic District, though the original adobe hacienda of the rancho has since burned down. The Treaty of Santa Teresa ( es, Tratado de Santa Teresa) was signed at the rancho in 1844, temporarily ending the hostilities between Governor

Manuel Micheltorena Joseph Manuel María Joaquin Micheltorena y Llano (8 June 1804 – 7 September 1853) was a brigadier general of the Mexican Army, adjutant-general of the same, governor, commandant-general and inspector of the department of Las Californias, then ...

and the revolters led by former Governor

Juan Bautista Alvarado Juan Bautista Valentín Alvarado y Vallejo (February 14, 1809 – July 13, 1882) was a Californio politician that served as Governor of Alta California from 1837-42. Prior to his term as governor, Alvarado briefly led a movement for independe ...

. RAMAC Park is named after the

IBM 305 RAMAC The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive (magnetic disk storage) for secondary storage. The system was publicly announced on September 14, 1956,

, the first computer to use a disk drive, which was developed at the IBM Santa Teresa Lab in the 1950s.Cadence Community - RAMAC Park and the Origin of the Disk Drive
/ref>

Geography

Santa Teresa is located in South San Jose. It is separated in the west from

Almaden Valley , other_name= , native_name= es, Almadén , nickname= , settlement_type= Neighborhood of San Jose , total_type= , motto= , image_skyline = , flag_size= , image_sea= , seal_size= , image_shield= , shield_size= , image_blank_emblem= , ...

by the

and located north of Coyote Valley, which separates Santa Teresa from the Madrone neighborhood of

Morgan Hill Morgan Hill is a city in Santa Clara County, California, at the southern tip of Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Morgan Hill is an affluent residential community, the seat of several high-tech companies, and a dining, entertainmen ...

. To the northeast of Santa Teresa is Edenvale and to the northwest is

Blossom Valley Blossom Valley is a neighborhood of San Jose, California, located in South San Jose. Geography Blossom Valley is located in South San Jose. It is northeast of Almaden Valley, northwest of Santa Teresa, east of Cambrian, west of Edenvale, and s ...

Tulare Hill Tulare Hill is a prominent hill in the Santa Teresa Hills of western Santa Clara County, California. It lies along the southernmost edge of San Jose, California, adjacent to the Metcalf Energy Center. The hill and surrounding of serpentine gr ...

serves as the barrier between the southern tip of Santa Teresa and Coyote Valley. It is made up of the ZIP Codes of 95119, 95139, 95193, 95123, and the parts of 95138 that are west of Coyote Creek. The Cottle Transit Village is a semi-urban district of Santa Teresa located in the northern-central portion of the district.

Parks and plazas

* Santa Teresa County Park *Palmia Park *Los Paseos Park *George Page Park *Ramac Park *Raleigh Linear Park *Avenida España Park *Black Mountain Bowmen

Education

Santa Teresa is mostly served by the Oak Grove School District, which includes: *Taylor Elementary School *Santa Teresa Elementary School *Bernal Intermediate School *

Santa Teresa High School Santa Teresa High School (also referred to as STHS) is a public high school located in the suburban Santa Teresa neighborhood of southern San Jose, California. The school is a member of the East Side Union High School District and serves student ...

The southernmost portions of Santa Teresa are served by the

Morgan Hill Unified School District The Morgan Hill Unified School District (MHUSD) is a public school district operating eight elementary schools, two middle schools, and three high schools in southern Santa Clara County, California. Its jurisdiction covers all of Morgan Hill, C ...

, which operates two schools in Santa Teresa: * Los Paseos Elementary School * Martin Murphy Middle School

Transportation

VTA train at Santa Teresa station, July 2018

Santa Teresa is served by three stations of the VTA light rail. *

Cottle station Cottle station is a light rail station operated by Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The station is served by the Blue Line of the VTA Light Rail system. It was part of the original ''Guadalupe Line'', the first segment of lig ...

on Cottle Rd (central Santa Teresa) * Santa Teresa station on Santa Teresa Blvd (southern Santa Teresa) *

Snell station Snell station is a light rail station operated by Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The station is served by the Blue Line of the VTA Light Rail system. It was part of the original ''Guadalupe Line'', the first segment of light ...

on Snell Rd (serving both western Santa Teresa and

)

Landmarks

Kaiser San Jose Medical Center Kaiser San Jose Medical Center, also known as Kaiser Santa Teresa, is a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Jose, California, located in the Santa Teresa district of South San Jose. Kaiser San Jose has been ranked within the top 50 best hospitals i ...

* Santa Teresa County Park *

Historic District

Popular culture

*Santa Teresa is the home of

Kinsey Millhone Kinsey Millhone is a fictional character created by the American author Sue Grafton (1940–2017) for her "alphabet mysteries" series of 25 best-selling novels which debuted in 1982. Millhone, a former police officer turned private investigator, a ...

Sue Grafton Sue Taylor Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" (''"A" Is for Alibi'', etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fic ...

's "Alphabet" series of detective novels.

Gallery

File:Charlotte & Raleigh (Santa Teresa, San Jose).jpg, Intersection of Charlotte & Raleigh File:Shops on Coronado Ave in Santa Teresa, San Jose 1731.jpg, Shops on Coronado Ave File:Kaiser San Jose Medical Center 1840 (cropped).jpg,

File:SJPD Southern Police Station 2237 (cropped).jpg, San Jose PD Southern Police Station File:The Lennar at Avenue One.jpg, Apartments on Charlotte File:Equinix San Jose Campus 2213 (cropped).jpg, Equinix San Jose campus

References

External links

City of San Jose Neighborhood Boundaries Map
{{Neighborhoods of San Jose Neighborhoods in San Jose, California