Palo Alto timeline

This timeline puts Palo Alto's history in order, one dated entry at a time. It runs from the Ohlone homeland before 1769 through the ranchos, Mayfield, the founding of Stanford and the town, the electronics era and the counterculture to the city of 2026. Where sources disagree on a date, the entry says so.

Each era links to a longer page if you want the full story. For a narrative overview, start with our history of Palo Alto.

Before 1769: the Ohlone homeland

Ohlone communities lived along the creeks and bay shore for thousands of years. Read more on our page about the Ohlone.

• About 490 B.C.: People begin living at a Bay Area village site later studied with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. It stays in use until about A.D. 1775.
• About A.D. 940: El Palo Alto, the redwood that will name the city, sprouts by San Francisquito Creek, based on age estimates.
• 1769: About eight independent local tribes live on the San Francisco Peninsula. The Puichon live along lower San Francisquito Creek.

1769 to 1847: Spanish and Mexican California

Spain's arrival brought missions and cattle. Mexico then divided mission pastures into ranchos. See Spanish and Mexican era.

• November 2, 1769: Members of the Portolá expedition see San Francisco Bay from Sweeney Ridge.
• November 6 to 11, 1769: The expedition camps by San Francisquito Creek near a tall redwood it calls El Palo Alto.
• 1774: Father Francisco Palóu puts up a cross at the camp site, according to the state landmark plaque.
• 1776: Pedro Font maps and measures the tall tree. Mission San Francisco de Asís is founded.
• 1777: Mission Santa Clara de Asís is founded. Its grazing lands cover most of future Palo Alto.
• 1797: Mission San Jose is founded. Many Ohlone ancestors are baptized there.
• 1816: Artist Louis Choris draws Ohlone baskets and tools during a Russian expedition's visit to San Francisco.
• 1821: Mexico wins independence from Spain.
• 1822: José Peña receives permission to graze land that later becomes Rancho Rincón de San Francisquito.
• 1835: Rafael Soto and María Antonia Mesa settle near San Francisquito Creek.
• 1839: Rancho San Francisquito is granted to Antonio Buelna.
• 1841: María Antonia Mesa receives Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito. José Peña receives Rancho Rincón de San Francisquito.
• 1844: Juana Briones de Miranda buys Rancho La Purísima Concepción.
• 1847: Secundino and Teodoro Robles buy Peña's rancho and rename it Rancho Santa Rita. Some sources give 1849.
• January 1847: Californios and U.S. forces clash at the Battle of Santa Clara.

1848 to 1885: Mayfield and the stock farm

American rule brought land lawsuits, the railroad and a new town. See Mayfield and the Palo Alto Stock Farm.

• February 2, 1848: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transfers California to the United States.
• September 9, 1850: California becomes a state.
• 1851: The Land Act requires rancho owners to prove their titles.
• 1852: The Robles and Soto families file claims with the Land Commission.
• April 10, 1853: Elisha Oscar Crosby buys 250 acres from the Robles rancho and names it Mayfield Farm.
• 1853: James Otterson builds a roadhouse on El Camino Real, the start of Mayfield.
• 1855: The roadhouse is a mail stop and the settlement takes the name Mayfield.
• September 23, 1856: Sarah Wallis acquires Mayfield Farm.
• 1863: Court action reduces the Robles rancho to 6,981 acres. George Gordon assembles his Mayfield Grange estate.
• October 1863: The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad reaches Mayfield.
• January 1864: Train service through to San Jose begins.
• 1868: The Mayfield Brewery opens.
• 1869: The Mayfield Enterprise newspaper is publishing in English and Spanish. Mayfield's first station building goes up.
• 1870: Sarah Wallis leads California's first statewide suffrage organization.
• 1873: Eadweard Muybridge first tries to photograph Leland Stanford's trotter Occident.
• 1876: Leland Stanford buys Mayfield Grange, about 650 acres. It becomes the Palo Alto Stock Farm.
• 1877: Stanford buys the stallion Electioneer for $12,000.
• June 15, 1878: Muybridge photographs a trotter with a row of 12 cameras on the stock farm track.
• 1878: Edward Barron buys Mayfield Farm, the future Barron Park.
• 1878 to 1880: The stock farm's Red Barn is built.
• 1882: Leland Stanford buys former Robles land to the south.
• March 13, 1884: Leland Stanford Jr. dies of typhoid fever in Florence at 15.
• November 11, 1885: The Stanfords sign the founding grant of their university.

1886 to 1925: University Park becomes Palo Alto

A dry town grew beside the new university and eventually swallowed its wetter neighbor. See founding of Palo Alto.

• 1886: Mayfield rejects Leland Stanford's demand that it ban alcohol.
• 1887: Timothy Hopkins buys land north of the campus and lays out University Park. Alexander Gordon's tract to the south becomes College Terrace.
• May 14, 1887: The cornerstone of the Stanford campus is laid.
• 1888: Fire destroys a stock farm stable. Stanford orders a brick replacement.
• 1889: Hopkins writes liquor clauses into University Park deeds.
• October 1, 1891: Stanford University opens to students.
• March 1, 1892: J. F. Parkinson brings the first load of lumber to his University Park yard.
• 1892: University Park is renamed Palo Alto.
• June 1893: Leland Stanford dies.
• April 9, 1894: Male residents vote 98 to 21 to incorporate and elect a five-member Board of Trustees.
• April 16, 1894: Election results are filed with the state, the date usually given for incorporation.
• April 21, 1894: The state approves Palo Alto as a city of the sixth class.
• 1903: Mayfield incorporates. The Palo Alto Stock Farm closes.
• 1904: The Squire House is built at 900 University Avenue. Palo Alto's Carnegie library opens. Mayfield voters ban saloons, a ban in force by January 1905.
• February 28, 1905: Jane Stanford dies in Honolulu.
• April 18, 1906: The great earthquake damages Stanford and ruins the Robles hacienda.
• 1907: Timothy Hopkins and his wife give the city parkland along San Francisquito Creek.
• 1909: A city charter creates a 15-member council. Cyril Elwell founds Federal Telegraph. A state law bans liquor within a mile and a half of campus.
• 1911 to 1913: Lee de Forest develops the vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in Palo Alto.
• 1916: The Woman's Club of Palo Alto builds its hall.
• 1918: Julia Morgan's Hostess House opens at Camp Fremont. Thomas Foon Chew starts a cannery in Mayfield.
• 1919: The Hostess House, moved to Palo Alto, is dedicated to those who died in World War I.
• 1924: The first May Fete Children's Parade. A first Mayfield annexation vote fails.
• July 2, 1925: Palo Alto voters approve annexing Mayfield.
• July 6, 1925: Mayfield and Palo Alto are consolidated. Lincoln Avenue becomes California Avenue.

1926 to 1955: Electronics and growth

Stanford's engineers and the city's postwar boom set the stage for Silicon Valley.

• November 7, 1926: The Native Sons of the Golden West dedicate a plaque at El Palo Alto.
• 1926: Timothy Hopkins and his wife give the bronze horse statue at the stock farm's horse cemetery.
• June 1, 1932: Portolá Journey's End becomes California Historical Landmark No. 2.
• 1932: Birge Clark's Palo Alto Medical Clinic building, now the Roth Building, is built.
• January 1, 1936: Timothy Hopkins dies.
• 1937: Russell and Sigurd Varian build a prototype klystron at Stanford.
• January 1, 1939: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formalize their partnership in the Addison Avenue garage.
• 1940: The Children's Library, a gift of Lucie Stern, opens.
• 1941: Hoover Tower is completed. Mayfield's station is renamed California Avenue.
• 1946: Stanford reopens the Red Barn for riding.
• 1949: The Mayfield cannery closes.
• 1950: Palo Alto adopts the council and city manager system.
• 1951: Stanford and the city create the Stanford Industrial Park.
• 1953: Varian Associates moves into the park's first building.
• 1954 to 1955: Joseph Eichler builds Greenmeadow.
• 1955: Roy Kepler opens Kepler's Books in Menlo Park.
• September 1955: William Shockley and Arnold Beckman agree to start a semiconductor lab.

1956 to 1979: Silicon and counterculture

Chips, protest and music all flourished within a few miles of downtown. See Shockley and semiconductors and the 1960s.

• 1956: Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory opens at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View.
• December 1956: Shockley shares the Nobel Prize in Physics. His team toasts him at Rickey's Hotel in Palo Alto.
• September 18, 1957: Eight scientists leave Shockley and found Fairchild Semiconductor.
• November 1957: Fairchild moves to 844 East Charleston Road in Palo Alto.
• 1958: Joan Baez graduates from Palo Alto High School. Ken Kesey arrives at Stanford.
• July 30, 1959: Robert Noyce files his integrated circuit patent.
• May 1960: Fairchild produces its first working planar integrated circuits.
• 1962: Kesey publishes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
• August 1963: The Perry Lane cottages are demolished.
• May 5, 1965: The Warlocks play their first show at Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park.
• 1965: Foothills Park opens.
• December 4, 1965: The band plays its first show as the Grateful Dead.
• May 19, 1966: Students occupy Stanford's president's office over a draft exam.
• 1966: The Midpeninsula Free University begins.
• Summer 1968: Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found the company that becomes Intel.
• April 3, 1969: The April Third Movement forms at Stanford. A nine-day sit-in at the Applied Electronics Laboratory follows.
• 1969: The Federal Telegraph site becomes California Historical Landmark No. 836.
• 1970: Xerox opens PARC. A judge rules the Hopkins liquor clauses unenforceable.
• May 1971: Downtown marks its first legal public drink (accounts give May 21 or 22).
• July 1971: The Midpeninsula Free University disbands.
• March 6, 1972: The Squire House joins the National Register.
• 1972: Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins found their venture firm.
• March 1, 1973: Xerox PARC introduces the Alto.
• March 15, 1974: El Palo Alto becomes a California Point of Historical Interest.
• 1975: Palo Alto annexes Barron Park.
• July 30, 1976: The Hostess House joins the National Register. Its state landmark plaque follows on November 11.
• 1979: The city adopts its Historic Inventory and annexes a large area of bayside marsh.

1980 to 2026: Landmarks, startups and today

The city protected its past while downtown became startup territory. See historic landmarks.

• October 3, 1980: Professorville is listed on the National Register.
• April 30, 1983: The state places the Muybridge landmark plaque at Stanford.
• December 12, 1985: The Red Barn joins the National Register.
• March 27, 1986: The Ramona Street Architectural District is listed.
• October 11, 1986: The Sarah Wallis Mayfield Farm plaque is dedicated.
• 1987: The HP Garage becomes California Historical Landmark No. 976.
• 1989: The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe petitions for federal acknowledgment. Stanford begins returning 550 ancestral remains, a process completed in 1992. The Loma Prieta earthquake damages Stanford buildings.
• 1994: Palo Alto's centennial. The Hopkins Tract is proclaimed a local heritage district.
• April 18, 1996: The Palo Alto depot joins the National Register.
• 1999: Google moves into 165 University Avenue.
• 2004: Facebook moves to Palo Alto.
• July 28, 2005: Greenmeadow and Green Gables join the National Register.
• October 2005: The renovated Red Barn reopens. Kepler's Books reopens after closing in August.
• April 20, 2007: The HP Garage joins the National Register.
• 2011: The Juana Briones house is demolished.
• 2018: The City Council names April 9 Palo Alto Day. On August 15 the IEEE dedicates its Shockley lab milestone in Mountain View.
• March 2022: A DNA study with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe finds deep continuity with ancient Bay Area people.
• 2023: Xerox donates PARC to SRI International. Tesla names Palo Alto its global engineering headquarters.
• 2024: Electric Caltrain service begins, ending more than a century of locomotive smoke at El Palo Alto.
• January 2026: The planned February opening of the Palo Alto History Museum in the Roth Building is postponed after water leaks.

Using this timeline

A few notes on dates. Palo Alto's incorporation has three candidate days in April 1894. This site uses April 16 to match long local practice. The city seal adds a fourth date. As defined in Municipal Code 2.06.010 (Ord. 5204, 2013), it reads "Incorporated April 23, 1894", which differs from the dates other sources give. Our city seal and symbols page has more on the seal. The Robles purchase appears as both 1847 and 1849. Mayfield's saloon ban is dated 1904 or 1905 depending on whether you count the vote or the date it took effect. We note those differences rather than pick a winner silently.

To see many of these places in one day, follow the walk on our historic landmarks page. Visitors who prefer a guide can book a Silicon Valley history tour.

Frequently asked questions