Stories
Real stories about Palo Alto, from the people who published them
Coming soon
Made in Palo Alto is writing its own features and interviews with the people behind the businesses. The first ones land here.
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Classic reads
- Perry the donkey, model for ‘Donkey’ character in Shrek movies has died ↗The Barron Park donkey who modelled for Shrek dies at 30.
- City of Palo Alto to host its 40th Chili Cook Off July 4 ↗A preview of the Mitchell Park chili cook-off and summer festival.
- May Fete Parade century celebration ↗Preparations for the 100th May Fete Parade.
- It’s back! Expanded Junior Museum and Zoo to reopen on Nov. 12 ↗A tour of the rebuilt Junior Museum and Zoo at Rinconada Park.
- Community celebrates May Fete Parade ↗The May Fete Children’s Parade marks Palo Alto’s 125th birthday.
- Beloved Palo Alto donkey dies at 32 ↗Miner Forty Niner, Perry’s companion in the Barron Park pasture, and the donkeys’ long local history.
- Campus culture counted in the rings of El Palo Alto ↗How the Stanford Band’s Tree mascot goes back to the city’s namesake redwood.
- 1,000-Year-Old Tree Vs. Peninsula Train ↗El Palo Alto and the high-speed rail plans for the tracks beside it.
- Hewlett and Packard’s garage is now National Historic Landmark ↗The National Park Service names the HP garage a National Historic Landmark.
- Palo Alto Milkmen: A Delivery from the Past ↗The Peninsula Creamery and the town’s milkmen.
- Foreign Friends: An Unfriendly Welcome ↗The sister-city statue from Linköping and its short, unlucky life.
- The Hotel President: The Class of Palo Alto ↗Birge Clark’s 1929 hotel on University Avenue and what became of it.
- The Lytton Plaza Protests: Rebels Without a Cause ↗The downtown plaza’s turbulent summers between 1968 and 1972.
- The Christmas Flood ↗San Francisquito Creek floods hundreds of homes at Christmas 1955.
- The Fourth of July: Palo Alto’s Summertime Celebrations ↗The town’s all-day Independence Day festivals of 1895, 1901 and 1904.
- Bikes in Palo Alto ↗A century of bicycles in Palo Alto, from 1890s races to the Bryant Street bike boulevard.
- The 1906 Earthquake: “Like a Terrier Shaking a Rat” ↗How the young town came through the great earthquake and rebuilt.
- Stanford Research Park: The Engine of Silicon Valley ↗Frederick Terman and the first university-owned industrial park.
- Birge Clark: Palo Alto’s In-House Designer ↗The architect whose Spanish Colonial buildings shaped the look of the town.
- The University Train Depot: A Streamline to the Past ↗The 1941 Streamline Moderne station at the foot of University Avenue.
- The Stanford Theatre: As Time Goes By ↗How the 1925 movie palace on University Avenue slid into decline and was rescued by David Woodley Packard.
- El Palo Alto: Rooted in History ↗The thousand-year-old redwood that gave the city its name, from Portolá’s camp to the misting pipe in its crown.