The Valley

Cupertino is a suburban city in Santa Clara County, California, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 58,302 at the time of the 2010 census. Forbes ranked it as one of the most educated small towns. It is best known as home to the worldwide headquarters of Apple Inc.

The Cupertino region is mainly suburban residential and technical-industrial with a relatively high standard of living.

Cupertino was named after Arroyo San José de Cupertino (now Stevens Creek). The creek had been named by Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza's cartographer, who named it after Saint Joseph of Cupertino. Saint Joseph (born Giuseppe Maria Desa, and later known as Giuseppe da Copertino) was named after the town of Copertino in the Apulia region of Italy. The name Cupertino first became widely used when John T. Doyle, a San Francisco lawyer and historian, named his winery on McClellan Road "Cupertino". After the turn of the 20th century, Cupertino displaced the former name for the region, which was "West Side".

A major milestone in Cupertino's development was the creation by some of the city's largest landowners of VALLCO Business and Industrial Park in the early 1960s. Of the 25 property owners, 17 decided to pool their land to form VALLCO Park, 6 sold to Varian Associates (property later sold to Hewlett-Packard), and two opted for transplanting to farms elsewhere. The name VALLCO was derived from the names of the principal developers: Varian Associates and the Leonard, Lester, Craft, and Orlando families. A neighborhood outdoor shopping center and, much later, the enclosed Vallco Fashion Park, briefly renamed Cupertino Square, were also developed.

De Anza College opened in 1967. The college, named for Juan Bautista De Anza, occupies a 112-acre (0.45 km2) site that was the location of a winery built at the turn of the last century, called Beaulieu by its owners, Charles and Ella Baldwin. Their mansion has now become the California History Center. De Anza College now has about 22,000 students and is a hub of activity in the city. Its flea market, held the first Saturday of the month, attracts thousands from around the area.

Housing developments were rapidly constructed in the following years as developers created many neighborhoods, including Fairgrove, Garden Gate, Monta Vista, Seven Springs, and many other developments. Although originally low-cost housing, Silicon Valley's housing prices shot up dramatically as many houses that were formerly lowly priced became multi-million dollar homes. The high cost of living in Cupertino is attributed by people wanting their children to receive high-quality schooling. Nevertheless, the price of housing seems to have weathered even the 2007–8 slump in economy.

Cupertino is one of many cities that claim to be the "heart" of Silicon Valley, as many semi-conductor and computer companies were founded here and in the surrounding areas. The worldwide headquarters for Apple Inc. is also located here in a modern complex circled by the playfully named Infinite Loop. Applehas also announced that it plans to build a new 150-acre (610,000 m2) second campus between Interstate 280, N Wolfe Rd, E Homestead Rd and along Tantau Ave one mile east of the old campus. The different (nine) properties (50-acre (0.2 km2) south of Pruneridge Avenue were bought in 2006, the property (100-acre (0.4 km2) north of it in 2010 (from Hewlett-Packard). On June 7, 2011, Steve Jobs gave a presentation to Cupertino City Council, detailing the architectural design of the new building and its environs. The new campus is planned to house up to 13,000 employees in one central four-storied circular building surrounded by extensive landscape (with parking mainly underground and the rest centralized in a parking structure).

Other companies headquartered in Cupertino include Trend Micro, Lab126, Packeteer, Chordiant, and Portal Software. Over 60 high-tech companies have offices there, including IBM, Olivetti and Oracle. Most of these high-tech companies are located on De Anza Boulevard, Cali Mill Plaza, and Bubb Road.

Though Cupertino is home to the headquarters of many high-tech companies, very little manufacturing actually takes place in the city. The city's large office parks are primarily dedicated to management and design functions.
One of the major employers in the area is the aggregate rock quarry and cement plant in the foothills to the west of Cupertino. Currently owned and operated by Lehigh Southwest Cement, it was originally founded by Henry J. Kaiser as the Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant in 1939. Its somewhat novel charter was to provide the majority of the cement used in the construction of the Shasta Dam. It achieved this goal to with impressive results, supplying the 6 million barrels (950,000 m3) of cement over a dedicated nine mile (14 km)-long conveyor system. The cement plant continues to be an important part of the local economy, and is the sole reason for the lone railroad line that runs through the city.