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San Jose Facts & Worksheets

San Jose, officially the City of San Jose, is the economic, cultural, and political center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California.

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San Jose, officially the City of San Jose, is the economic, cultural, and political center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California. San Jose is a global city, notable for its status as a center of innovation, its affluence, and extremely high cost of living. San Jose has earned the nickname “Capital of Silicon Valley”.

See the fact file below for more information on the San Jose or alternatively, you can download our 19-page San Jose worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  • California was claimed as part of the Spanish Empire in 1542, when explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo charted the Californian coast.
  • In 1776, the Californias were included as part of the Captaincy General of the Provincias Internas, a large administrative division created by José de Gálvez, Spanish Minister of the Indies, in order to provide greater autonomy for the Spanish Empire’s lightly populated and largely ungoverned borderlands.
  • San Jose was officially founded as California’s first civilian settlement on November 29, 1777, as the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga.
  • In 1800, due to the growing population in the northern part of the Californias, Diego de Borica, Governor of the Californias, officially split the province into two parts: Alta California (Upper California), which would eventually become a US state, and Baja California (Lower California).
  • As World War II started, the city’s economy shifted from agriculture to industrial manufacturing. On April 3, 1979, the San Jose City Council adopted San José, with the diacritical mark on the “e”. The accent reflects the Spanish version of the name, and the dropping of accents in all-capital writing was typical in Spanish.

CLIMATE

  • San Jose has a Mediterranean climate, with warm to hot, dry summers and mild to cool, wet winters. San Jose has an average of 301 days of sunshine and an annual mean temperature of 60.5°F (15.8°C).
  • The city is somewhat more sheltered from rain, giving it a semiarid feel with a mean annual rainfall of 15.82 inches or 401.8 millimetres.
  • Downtown San Jose experiences the lightest rainfall in the city, while South San Jose, only 10 miles (16 km) away, experiences more rainfall, and somewhat more extreme temperatures.

ECONOMY

  • The cost of living in San Jose and the surrounding areas is among the highest in California and the nation, according to 2004 data.
  • Housing costs are the primary reason for the high cost of living. San Jose holds the distinction of being a United States Foreign-Trade Zone.
  • San Jose lists many companies with 1,000 employees or more, including the headquarters of eBay, Adobe, and Cisco Systems.

PLACES TO VISIT

  • Tortuguero National Park is a protected wilderness area on Costa Rica’s northern Caribbean coast. Its beaches are famous nesting grounds for sea turtles, including endangered green turtles.
  • Emma Prusch Farm Park is a 43.5-acre park in East San Jose, California. The park hosts an annual Harvest Festival and is operated cooperatively by the San Jose Parks and Recreation Department and the non-profit Emma Prusch Farm Park Foundation.
  • Municipal Rose Garden is a historic rose garden in San Jose, California, in the Rose Garden District. Founded in 1927, the garden is exclusively dedicated to roses and features over 3,500 shrubs representing 189 rose varieties.

SPORTS

  • San Jose is home to the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League (NHL), the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League (AHL), and the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer. The Sharks and the Barracuda play in the SAP Center in San Jose.
  • The San Jose Sharks are a professional ice hockey team based in San Jose. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League.

TRANSPORTATION

  • Like other American cities built mostly after World War II, San Jose is highly automobile dependent, with 76 percent of residents driving alone to work and 12 percent carpooling in 2017.
  • The city set an ambitious goal to shift motorized trips to walking, bicycling, and public transport in 2009 with the adoption of its Envision San Jose 2040 General Plan, but has so far failed to make progress towards these goals.
  • In 2018, the city extended these goals to 2050 with its San Jose Climate Smart plan, by which time commutes made by driving alone are expected to drop to just 12 percent and use of public transport for commutes is to leap to 35 percent, while 35 percent of commutes are also expected to be made on foot or by bicycle (combined).

San Jose Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about the San Jose across 19 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use San Jose worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the San Jose, officially the City of San Jose, which is the economic, cultural, and political center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California. San Jose is a global city, notable for its status as a center of innovation, its affluence, and extremely high cost of living. San Jose has earned the nickname “Capital of Silicon Valley”.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • San Jose Facts
  • History Timeline
  • Complete Me
  • SJ Basket
  • Silicon Valley
  • Modes of Transport
  • San Jose Sharks
  • Tour List
  • Pin the Pics
  • Strong Typhoons
  • Best Words

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Link will appear as San Jose Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, January 17, 2020

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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