Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale (/ˈsʌniveɪl/) is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States.

Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield and NASA Ames Research Center to the northwest, Mountain View to the northwest, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east.

Sunnyvale's population was 155,805 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous city in the county (after San Jose) and the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area.

As one of the major cities that make up California's high-tech area known as Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale is the birthplace of the video game industry, former location of Atari headquarters. Many technology companies are headquartered in Sunnyvale and many more operate there, including several aerospace/defense companies.

Sunnyvale was also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station, often referred to as "the Blue Cube" because of the color and shape of its windowless main building. The facility, previously known as Sunnyvale Air Force Station, was named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka. It served as an artificial satellite control facility of the U.S. military until August 2010 and has since been decommissioned and demolished.

Sunnyvale is one of the few municipalities in California to have a single unified Department of Public Safety, where all personnel are trained as firefighters, police officers, and EMTs, so that they can respond to an emergency in any of the three roles.

The Santa Clara Valley was heavily populated by the indigenous Ohlone people when the Spanish first arrived in the 1770s. However, following the arrival of the Spaniards, smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases greatly reduced the Ohlone population. While some of the Ohlone Native Americans died from diseases, others survived and were forced into Christian faith by the Spanish. In 1777, Mission Santa Clara was founded by Franciscan missionary Padre Junipero Serra and was originally located in San Jose (near what is now the San Jose International Airport runway).

In 1843, Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas was granted to Francisco Estrada and his wife Inez Castro. Portions of the land given in this grant later developed into the cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Two years later, in 1844, another land grant was provided to Lupe Yñigo, one of the few Native Americans to hold land grants. His land grant was first called Rancho Posolmi, named in honor of a village of the Ohlone that once stood in the area.