Glossary

The words you’ll hear around Palo Alto — places, history, weather and local ways, explained

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Architecture

Eichler homes: The modern, one-story houses built by Joseph Eichler after the Second World War; he built almost 3,000 in Palo Alto.
Hotel President: Birge Clark’s six-story Spanish Colonial Revival hotel of 1929 on University Avenue, named in honour of Herbert Hoover.
Lou Henry Hoover House: The house on the Stanford campus that Lou Henry Hoover designed herself, finished in 1920; now the home of Stanford’s president.
Palo Alto station: The Caltrain station at the foot of University Avenue, a Streamline Moderne building of 1941 and the second-busiest stop on the line.
Ramona Street: A downtown block between University and Hamilton Avenues of Spanish Colonial shops and offices, a National Register historic district since 1985.
Stanford Theatre: The 1925 movie palace at 221 University Avenue, restored by the Packard Foundation, that shows films from Hollywood’s golden age.

Events

Chili Cook Off: The city’s Fourth of July festival at Mitchell Park, with free chili tasting from competing teams; 2024 was its 40th year.
Festival of the Arts: A two-day art festival on nine blocks of University Avenue each August, hosted by the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce.
Great Glass Pumpkin Patch: A free autumn sale of more than 10,000 handmade glass pumpkins on the lawn of the Palo Alto Art Center.
May Fete Parade: Palo Alto’s children’s parade down University Avenue each May, followed by a fair at Heritage Park; students counted the 2024 parade as the 100th.
Moonlight Run: A night-time 5K and 10K run and walk from the Baylands Athletic Center each autumn, hosted by the city and the Palo Alto Weekly.

History & People

Big Tree Station: An early name for the railroad stop by El Palo Alto, from the days when the redwood was the landmark on the line.
Birge Clark: The architect (1893-1989) who designed much of Palo Alto in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, from the post office to the Lucie Stern Community Center.
Frederick Terman: The Stanford engineering professor and later provost who encouraged students such as Hewlett and Packard to found companies near Palo Alto, and who championed Stanford Research Park.
Frenchman’s Tower: A small brick tower of 1875 on Old Page Mill Road, built for the mysterious Frenchman known as Peter Coutts.
Hopkins Tract: The 740 acres Timothy Hopkins bought in 1887 for the new townsite, now a local Heritage District in the north of the city.
Juana Briones: The Californio rancher, healer and businesswoman (about 1802-1889) whose Rancho La Purísima Concepción lay on Palo Alto’s western edge.
Palo Alto Stock Farm: Leland Stanford’s horse farm of the 1870s and 1880s, where Electioneer stood and Muybridge photographed horses in motion; its land became Stanford University.
Sarah Wallis: The owner of Mayfield Farm (1825-1905) and a pioneer of women’s suffrage in California, honoured by a state landmark in Barron Park.
Uncle Jim’s Cabin: James Otterson’s stage stop, inn and saloon of the 1850s, the seed of the town of Mayfield.
University Park: The first name of the dry townsite laid out beside Stanford in the late 1880s; it incorporated as Palo Alto in 1894.

Local Life & Customs

Bicycle boulevard: A street set up to favour cyclists; Palo Alto pioneered the idea on Bryant Street in the early 1980s.
City of Palo Alto Utilities: Palo Alto’s own city-run utility for water, electricity, gas and wastewater, a tradition that goes back to the 1890s.
Dry town: Palo Alto was founded as a temperance town: early deeds forbade the making or selling of liquor, and the town had no saloons.
Paly: The local name for Palo Alto High School, beside Stanford, known for its student newspaper The Campanile and its yearbook, the Madrono.

Nature & Wildlife

Barron Park donkeys: The donkeys that have grazed the pasture beside Bol Park since 1934; one of them, Perry, was the model for Donkey in Shrek.
Baylands Nature Preserve: The city-owned marshland on San Francisco Bay, 1,940 acres with 15 miles of trails and some of the best birdwatching on the West Coast.
Bol Park: A 13.8-acre park along Matadero Creek in Barron Park, beside the pasture of the Barron Park donkeys.
Boronda Lake: The small lake in Foothills Nature Preserve, made by damming a tributary of Buckeye Creek, used for fishing and canoeing.
Foothills Nature Preserve: A 1,400-acre city preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains, with Boronda Lake and 15 miles of trails; residents-only from 1969 to 2020.
Matadero Creek: The creek that runs through the middle of Palo Alto, past Bol Park and the donkey pasture, to the Baylands flood basin.
Palo Alto Duck Pond: The pond in the Baylands, first built as a public swimming pool, now a gathering place for ducks, gulls and visitors.
Pearson-Arastradero Preserve: A 622-acre city preserve of grassland and oak hills off Arastradero Road, with about 10 miles of trails.
San Francisquito Creek: The creek along Palo Alto’s northern edge, the boundary with Menlo Park and East Palo Alto and with San Mateo County.

Places

Barron Park: A neighbourhood on the old Mayfield Farm, known for its donkeys and Bol Park; it was the last large area annexed to Palo Alto, in 1975.
California Avenue: Palo Alto’s second downtown street, once Lincoln Street in the town of Mayfield, with its own Caltrain station and a Sunday farmers’ market.
College Terrace: A neighbourhood beside Stanford whose cross streets are named for East Coast colleges; it was the first place to be called Palo Alto.
El Palo Alto: The coast redwood on San Francisquito Creek that gave Palo Alto its name: about 110 feet tall, more than a thousand years old, and pictured on the city logo and Stanford’s seal.
Gamble Garden: The Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden at 1431 Waverley Street, a historic house and garden in Old Palo Alto, free and open to the public.
Junior Museum and Zoo: The city’s children’s science museum and small zoo at Rinconada Park, founded in 1934 and rebuilt in 2021.
Lytton Plaza: The small public plaza at University Avenue and Emerson Street, built in 1964 and long the town’s traditional place of protest.
Mayfield: The older town around today’s California Avenue, settled in the 1850s and joined to Palo Alto in 1925.
Palo Alto: A city of about 68,600 people in northwestern Santa Clara County, named for a redwood on San Francisquito Creek and founded as the college town beside Stanford University.
Palo Alto Art Center: The city’s art center on Newell Road by Rinconada Park, in the building that was city hall in 1953, home of the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch.
Professorville: A historic district of brown-shingled houses near downtown built by early Stanford professors, home of the HP garage.
Stanford Research Park: The technology park on Stanford land along Page Mill Road, begun in 1951 as the world’s first university research park.
Stanford University: The university Leland and Jane Stanford founded on their Palo Alto farm in memory of their son; it opened on October 1, 1891, and borders the city.
University Avenue: Downtown Palo Alto’s main street, with the 1941 train station at its foot and shops, restaurants, the Stanford Theatre and Lytton Plaza along its blocks.

Technology

Birthplace of Silicon Valley: The title on the state landmark plaque at the HP garage, which calls it the birthplace of the world’s first high-technology region.
Federal Telegraph: The radio company founded in Palo Alto in 1909, where Lee de Forest built the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator.
HP Garage: The garage at 367 Addison Avenue where Bill Hewlett and David Packard started Hewlett-Packard in 1938, called the “Birthplace of Silicon Valley”.
Xerox PARC: The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, opened in 1970, where laser printing, Ethernet and the modern graphical user interface were developed.