The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, more commonly known simply as the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), is a special district responsible for public transit services, congestion management, specific highway improvement projects, and countywide transportation planning for Santa Clara County, California. It serves San Jose, California, and the surrounding Silicon Valley. It is one of the governing parties for the Caltrain commuter rail line that serves the county. In 2022, the VTA's public transportation services had a combined ridership of 21,381,600, or about 84,800 per weekday as of the third quarter of 2023.
Mount Umunhum is a peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, located in Santa Clara County, California. It is the fourth-highest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, after Loma Prieta, Crystal Peak, and Mt. Chual. Most of the mountain is located within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve.
Coyote Valley is an area located in a narrowing of the southern Santa Clara Valley, in Northern California. Coyote Valley is approximately 7,400 acres (2,995 ha) in size and largely composed of farmland, orchards, open space preserves, and homes. Coyote Valley is generally divided into three sections: North Coyote Valley, the unincorporated village of Coyote, California, and South Coyote Valley.
Santa Teresa is a neighborhood of San Jose, California, United States, located in South San Jose. Founded in 1834, Santa Teresa was originally established as Rancho Santa Teresa by the Bernal family, a prominent Californio clan. Today, Santa Teresa is largely a residential area, but also home to numerous Silicon Valley tech campuses.
Coyote Creek is a river that flows through the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California. Its source is on Mount Sizer, in the mountains east of Morgan Hill. It eventually flows into Anderson Lake in Morgan Hill and then northwards through Coyote Valley to San Jose, where it empties into San Francisco Bay.
The Santa Clara County Library District is a public library system for Santa Clara County headquartered in Campbell, California. The library serves the communities and cities of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Saratoga, and all unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County. Other cities in Santa Clara County run their own library systems. In addition to these libraries, the library provides mobile library service with a bookmobile which visits preschools, retirement communities, migrant farmworker camps, and rural communities without easy access to library services. In 2020, SCCLD also launched a new website featuring a 24/7 online library.
Anderson Lake, also known as Anderson Reservoir, is an artificial lake in Morgan Hill, located in southern Santa Clara County, California. The reservoir is formed by the damming of Coyote Creek just below its confluence with Las Animas Creek. A 4,275-acre (1,730 ha) county park surrounds the reservoir and provides limited fishing, picnicking, and hiking activities. Although swimming is prohibited, boating, water-skiing, and jet-skiing are permitted in the reservoir.
Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together form the U.S. Census Bureau's San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, which is part of the larger San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area. Santa Clara is the most populous county in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Northern California. The county seat and largest city is San Jose; with about 1,000,000 residents, it is the 10th-most populous city in the United States, California's third-most populous city and the most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second- and third-largest cities are Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.
Berryessa/North San José station is an intermodal transit center located in the Berryessa district of San Jose, California. The station is served by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) buses. The transit center opened for bus service on December 28, 2019, and subsequently for BART service on June 13, 2020.
The Silicon Valley BART extension is an ongoing effort to expand service by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) into Santa Clara County via the East Bay from its former terminus at the Fremont station in Alameda County. Planned since at least 1981, the project has seven stations in three sequential phases.
The Bay checkerspot is a butterfly endemic to the San Francisco Bay region of the U.S. state of California. It is a federally threatened species, as a subspecies of Euphydryas editha.
Alamitos Creek or Los Alamitos Creek is a 7.7-mile-long (12.4 km) creek in San Jose, California, which becomes the Guadalupe River when it exits Lake Almaden and joins Guadalupe Creek. Los Alamitos Creek is located in Almaden Valley and originates from the Los Capitancillos Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near New Almaden. This creek flows through the Valley's Guadalupe Watershed, which is owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District. The creek flows in a generally northwesterly direction after rounding the Los Capitancillos Ridge and the town of New Almaden, in the southwest corner, before ambling along the Santa Teresa Hills on northeast side of the Almaden Valley. Its environment has some relatively undisturbed areas and considerable lengths of suburban residential character. Originally called Arroyo de los Alamitos, the creek's name is derived from "little poplar", "alamo" being the Spanish word for "poplar" or "cottonwood".
Samuel Theodore Liccardo is an American politician from California who served as the 65th mayor of San José from 2015 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, Liccardo was elected mayor in November 2014. He was reelected in 2018 with 75.8% of the vote. As the leader of the California Big City Mayors Coalition, Liccardo advocated on statewide issues including homelessness and COVID-19 response.
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department, sometimes referred to as Santa Clara County Parks Department or Santa Clara County Parks, is a government department in Santa Clara County, California. The department manages 28 parks with a total area over 52,000 acres (21,000 ha).
Máyyan 'Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve is an 1,859-acre (7.41 km2) publicly owned open space preserve in southern Santa Clara County. It opened to the public in August 2023 and there five miles of trails for visitors to enjoy. Visitors will need a free "Butterfly Pass" for hiking, biking, or horseback riding on the trails located inside the Habitat Protection Area. Total, there are 3.9 miles of trail designated as a portion of Bay Area Ridge Trail, a regional trail system that will someday stretch more than 550 miles along the ridge lines that encircle San Francisco Bay.
Fisher Creek is a 13.8 miles (22.2 km) stream that flows northwesterly through the Coyote Valley in southern Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is a tributary to the largest freshwater wetland in Santa Clara County, Laguna Seca, a seasonal lake important to groundwater recharge. From Laguna Seca, Fisher Creek was connected to Coyote Creek by an artificial channel.
Calero, also known as Calero Lake and occasionally as South Almaden Valley, is a rural neighborhood in the Almaden Valley district of San Jose, California. Located in South San Jose, Calero is notably home to Calero County Park, which surrounds Calero Lake.
The Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan (SCVHCP), also known as the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan, is an initiative issued in 2012 by the County of Santa Clara, the City of San José, the City of Morgan Hill, the City of Gilroy, the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD), and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). These governmental agencies are collectively called the "Local Partners" in regards to the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan. The plan's goal is to protect and encourage the growth of endangered species in Santa Clara County. It is a 50-year plan, costing an estimated $660 million as of 2012.
Hicks Creek, also known as Reynolds Creek, is a perennial 1.9 miles (3.1 km) northeast flowing stream in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is a tributary to Guadalupe Creek, which is in turn, a tributary to the Guadalupe River and south San Francisco Bay at San Jose, California.
