Talk:Santa Clara Valley

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Cities of Santa Clara Valley

-People need to stop adding the SF Peninsula cities of Mountain View, Palo Alto, Los Altos and the Los Altos Hills in this Santa Clara Valley article. I think people think that the Santa Clara Valley and the County of Santa Clara are the same thing. THEY ARE NOT. NOT THE SAME. Also I must add that Hollister and San Juan Bautista are IN the VALLEY. Check out that guys link at the bottom of the page about the US geological survey on the Santa Clara Valley. San Juan and Hollister is in, and Mountain View, Palo Alto and the Los Altos are out. Please do not make changes without reffrences. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goldengate9er (talk • contribs) 02:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure Gilroy and Morgan Hill are actually located in the Santa Clara Valley. The list of Santa Clara Valley communities reads identically to a list of every single incorporated municipality in Santa Clara County, but the valley and the county are not identical. I suspect Gilroy and Morgan Hill should not be so listed, but its a difficult thing to check on. KevinOKeeffe (talk) 22:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Palo Alto is in the list of cities in the Santa Clara Valley, but then the paragraph below the list says it's not. Is there a definitive reference? Or at least a map?

Flwyd (talk) 19:44, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I added San Juan Buatista and Hollister to the list. Not only is Gilroy and Morgan Hill part of the Santa Clara Valley but so are Hollister and San Juan Buatista. Check out this article http://www.eoearth.org/article/Santa_Clara_Valley_(Bailey). Its the encylocpedia of earth. It clearly defines the Santa Clara Valley. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.149.7 (talk) 06:44, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

This entire section on municipalities/cities of Santa Clara Valley needs citations and improvements, there seems to be an unclear definition of the area here - and it is getting confused with "Silicon Valley" or "Santa Clara County". It's okay if it's somewhat unclear as a region, as long as it has some citations of reference explaining how/why. Jooojay (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The article defines the northern limit of Santa Clara Valley as the "southern end of San Francisco Bay", which seems pretty clear. By that definition, Mountain View is almost entirely in the valley. The Alviso neighborhood of San Jose should probably be considered the northernmost SCV community. Milpitas straddles the east-west line running through Alviso, so it also has to be included. That east-west line also runs through Palo Alto, but most of the city population is north of the line. I don't consider Palo Alto part of Santa Clara Valley, but it's not a clear-cut case either way.

In hydrology, the standard way to define a valley is as a watershed or collection of watersheds that all drain to the same place. For the Santa Clara Valley, that place is the southern end of San Francisco Bay. By that definition, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Hollister and San Juan Bautista are not in the Santa Clara Valley. Hollister and San Juan Bautista are not in Santa Clara County. Geographically, you can make a case that all four cities are in the same valley--or not. WCCasey (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

As an alluvial plain and tectonic graben, Santa Clara Valley was defined for the USGS by Poland and Ireland in 1988 as stretching 90 miles from San Francisco to Hollister, the lower elevation area inside of two fault zones. The western fault is San Andreas, and the eastern fault is the Hayward Fault in the north part and the Calaveras Fault in the south part. The valley is defined by the lower elevation areas between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range, in the northern half it would be the part of Diablo that includes Mt Hamilton and creates the hills behind Fremont and Hayward. Poland and Ireland implied that the north border of the valley was the arbitrary line of San Francisco's southern border, which is about 37.7°N. Poland and Ireland noted that there are two distinct watersheds in Santa Clara Valley, that the Pajaro River in the south part of the valley drained into Monterey Bay rather than San Francisco Bay.

Of course, the practical definition of the valley is the part that can be studied using taxes collected by Santa Clara County, so when reports are made about the valley, the portion that is considered is only the part within Santa Clara County. This section was the focus of intensive water table and water flow studies in the 1950s and 1960s, because the water level in the wells had dropped 200 feet, resulting in 15 feet of land subsidence, and flooding of the bay waters had caused millions of dollars of damage. A system of dikes and pumping stations was put in place, and outside water was piped in to solve the problem. Studies continue to be published focusing on this part.

Regarding the list of cities, I think it was clogging the infobox, so I removed all the city names from the infobox. The article body should list all the cities from Colma in the northwest to Hollister in the southeast. We should be including every city that is not high up in the hills. Perhaps an elevation of 100 meters (330 feet) would suffice as an arbitrary topographic border above which is not longer valley but foothills. If so, Woodside is out, Los Gatos is out, Saratoga is out. Binksternet (talk) 19:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Merge this Article into South Bay

Do you guys think we should merge "Santa Clara Valley" into South Bay (or vice versa)? The articles have very similar information and can be made into one detailed article. Gamer9832 (talk) 23:25, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Not really.....But it's still fine.--Yhz1221 (talk) 03:30, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Against - I have several reasons for keeping the article separate. First, the region historically is the precursor to Silicon Valley. SC Valley may not the be the agriculture commercial center it once was, but there should be a means to document this. Hence the article. Second, if the article were to be merged, it should be the Silicon Valley article. I am not in favor of that either, but at least it would track geographically. IMO, the South Bay is fine as it is, a somewhat short "definition style" article. Third, the region is significant enough that its been the sole subject of several books, has a museum dedicated to it (History San Jose), plus the Smithsonian and Ellis Island museums have both had exhibits focused on the region, its history, and cultural and immigration significance. Just my 2 cents... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 16:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Santa Clara Valley is the proper name... legal name listed on all of the maps & such. "south bay" is the nickname we use (here in silicon valley) to distinguish Santa Clara Valley from the North Bay (wine country) and East Bay. Keep it Santa Clara Valley as it is the proper name & merge "south bay" into the Santa Clara Valley site and list "south bay" as the nickname. 108.89.32.123 (talk) 05:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC) Tom (San Jose, CA).

The names mean different things, and the articles should not be merged. WCCasey (talk) 23:53, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done The article South Bay (San Francisco Bay Area) was merged into this article on October 26, 2013. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 00:50, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Map

Does anyone have a map of this region? Runner1928 (talk) 02:34, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute

Non-neutral point of view located in the Silicon Valley part of the article, I added the Lopsided template. Someone should fix it. Or correct me if I'm wrong. Either way, the "is"/"or rather was" bit is total bs. And then the unnecessary part about underpaid latina workers and well paid white males. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's pretty correct, but it doesn't belong in this article at all.5.28.110.2 (talk) 19:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Should this article be merged to Silicon Valley?

This is a user in Chinese Wikipedia. I noticed that in Chinese version, this article was redirected to Silicon Valley. I believe that the article of Silicon Valley should focus on the technological development of the surrounding region, while this article should focus on the geographic and historical factors of this region. Hence, I just canceled the redirection. I wonder if I am getting this right.Johnson.Xia (talk) 07:41, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria of this and two related articles

A request for comment is underway at Talk:Silicon Valley#RfC: Inclusion criteria of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara Valley and Santa Clara County, California. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Binksternet (talk) 18:47, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Northern edge of Santa Clara Valley is San Francisco

Books by geologists describe Santa Clara Valley as a tectonic graben covered by an alluvial plain. The valley lies between two nearly parallel earthquake faults. These descriptions say that it stretches from Hollister to San Francisco, that the valley is 90 or 100 miles long. Sources that support this definition are:

• Annual Report of the State Mineralogist, 1890. This California government report says that the San Francisco Bay, Santa Clara and Gilroy are all part of the same geographic feature, which is a "great central valley" falling between two mountain ranges. See page 48.
• Bulletin of the Department of Geology of the University of California, published in 1896 by the editor Andrew C. Lawson. On pages 151–153, the source states that Santa Clara Valley is one continuous topographic feature from the "depression which contains the Bay of San Francisco" to Santa Clara to San Benito. It says this single feature is made up of sections known locally by three names: SF Bay, Santa Clara Valley, and San Benito Valley. The author proposes a new name for the larger valley: Santa Clara–San Benito Valley. He says that the larger Santa Clara Valley drainage basin is 150 miles long with the north end at the Golden Gate strait.
• Ground Water in Santa Clara Valley, California, published in 1924 by the US Government, was written by geologist William Otterbein Clark. Clark says "Santa Clara Valley extends southeastward from San Francisco... Its north end is occupied by the southern part of San Francisco Bay. The drainage basin of Santa Clara Valley is about 140 miles long... The valley itself has a length of about 100 miles, of which 70 miles is south of San Francisco Bay... This report only covers that part of Santa Clara Valley lying south of latitude 37°40′, but there is some land north of this line on the east side of San Francisco Bay that may properly be considered a part of the valley." That last part refers to Milpitas, and the author is saying that his report will include Milpitas and every part of Santa Clara Valley south of 37°40′ which runs through modern-day Great America amusement park. He is choosing to focus on a smaller subset of the larger geographic feature.
• The Santa Clara Valley, California: A Study in Landscape Changes by Jan Otto Marius Broek, published in 1932. It says on page 11, the start of Chapter 2, that the valley is "nearly one hundred miles" long starting at Hollister in the south.
• Subsidence in the Santa Clara Valley, California: A Progress Report by Joseph Fairfield Poland, published in 1962. Page C1 (the Introduction) says "The Santa Clara Valley is a large structural trough that extends from Hollister to San Francisco, Calif." The author narrows the focus for convenience: "Discussion in this report is limited to this central reach of the valley, which extends southeastward about 30 miles from Redwood City and Niles to Coyote (fig. 4)." The author focuses only on the parts of the valley experiencing subsidence from depletion of underground water.
• Land Subsidence in the Santa Clara Valley, California, as of 1982, by Joseph Fairfield Poland and R. L. Ireland. They say "The Santa Clara Valley is a long, narrow structural trough that extends about 90 miles southeastward from San Francisco. San Francisco Bay occupies much of its northern one-third.... Land subsidence occurs in the central one-third of the valley in an area of intensive ground-water development. This report discusses only this densely populated central one-third of the valley..."

A great many geological studies of Santa Clara Valley have limited their scope to Santa Clara County because that's what their funding covers, and that's where huge subsidence problems emerged starting in the 1930s, caused by underground water pumped up for agricultural uses. The county (and the federal government) paid for decades of studies regarding the subsidence problem. The general practice of limiting scope to the county does not change the larger definition of the 90–100 mile long valley. Of course, a valley that long must include the bay side of San Mateo County and about 30 miles of the East Bay. Pinging Coolcaesar who blamed me at ANI for bringing an "outlier" definition here in 2021. My stance is that the expert geographer descriptions are absolutely defining, while the narrower cultural borders of Santa Clara Valley may be fashioned into an interesting side note for our readers. Binksternet (talk) 15:15, 23 April 2023 (UTC)