Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains,it has a population of 82,376.
Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the location of many high technology companies. In 1956, William Shockley established Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, the first company to develop silicon semiconductor devices in Silicon Valley. Today, Mountain View houses the headquarters of many of the world's largest technology companies, including Google and Alphabet Inc., Unicode Consortium, Intuit, NASA Ames research center, and major headquarter offices for Microsoft, Symantec, 23andMe, LinkedIn, Samsung, and Synopsys.
Points of interest
Downtown ( I Love it)
Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south.
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Four blocks with a concentration of restaurants, cafes, and shops extend south from the downtown station. The Michelin Guide-starred restaurant Chez TJ is located a block from Castro Street on Villa Street.
Sidewalk along Castro Street in downtown Mountain View
The core of downtown is the plaza shared by City Hall, the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts (MVCPA) and the Mountain View Public Library. The plaza is used for many community gatherings and events, and features a collection of public art. Peninsula Youth Theatre and TheatreWorks are among the home companies of the MVCPA.The City Hall and MVCPA complex, designed by William Turnbull of San Francisco, opened in 1991. Behind those buildings is Pioneer Park, formerly the site of Mountain View's first cemetery.
The Mountain View Police Department is located two blocks away from Castro Street on Villa Street
Since 1971, the city has held the annual Mountain View Art & Wine Festival on Castro Street by closing down the street to traffic for two days. There is a farmers' market in the Caltrain parking lot every Sunday morning. Every summer, once a month, the city celebrates Thursday Night Live by closing off Castro street to cars and providing live music events and car shows on Castro Street.
The Mountain View Farmers' Market is held every Sunday in the Downtown Mountain View Station parking lot.
Parks
The largest park in the city is Shoreline Park (where I normally go to run), which was built on a landfill and runs along the Bay north of U.S. Route 101. It includes Shoreline Amphitheatre, Shoreline Golf Course, as well as Rengstorff House, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. On the north side, facing the Bay, the park includes tidal ponds and mudflats, accessible via pedestrian and bicycle paths. The San Francisco Bay Trail runs along Shoreline Park.
Stevens Creek runs through Mountain View from the south and empties into the Bay in Shoreline Park. A paved pedestrian and bicycle path, the Stevens Creek Trail, runs alongside the creek for nearly its entire distance in Mountain View. Stevens Creek is home to coyotes, gray foxes, black-tailed deer, butterflies, dragonflies, and 150 species of birds, as well as shorebirds that feed in the mudflat. The shorebirds can be seen at low tide
Other parks include:
The Charleston Park
Eagle Park, which holds a public swimming pool, dog-friendly lawn, and World War II war memorial
Cuesta Park, a sprawling park with tennis courts, barbecue areas, and playgrounds, near El Camino Hospital and the YMCA
Rengstorff Park, home to a public swimming pool, community center, skate park, fenced dog park, and multiple playgrounds and picnic areas
Charleston Park, a five-acre park located near the Googleplex. The park was designed by SWA Group who received an ASLA Centennial Medallion in 1999 for their work.
The Computer History Museum is home to the largest and most significant collection of computing artifacts in the world.
The Shoreline Amphitheater is a large outdoor venue for large concerts and shows.
Moffett Field is a joint civil-military federal airfield located between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale, California. It is home to the Air National Guard. Its hangars for blimps and rigid airships (now mostly vacant) make unique landmarks for motorists on Highway 101.
NASA Ames Research Center is a research facility adjacent to Moffett, and also houses a gift-shop NASA visitor center.
The Historic Adobe Building, a small events center on Moffett Boulevard, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Joseph Parish was founded in 1905, and survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, only to burn down in 1928.St. Joseph's Seminary operated here between 1924 and 1991. The current St. Joseph church building was built in 1929.
The Mountain View Voice is the local newspaper, which began publishing in 1993.
Downtown is one of my favorite place to go, just to dinner or gathering with some friends for a coffee.
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