Sunnyvale () is a city 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 the San Francisco Bay 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. A small section of the border near Sunnyvale Baylands Park meets the city of San Jose (specifically the Alviso region) to the east and north.
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, the former location of Atari's 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 called "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 California municipalities 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 those roles.
History The Santa Clara Valley was heavily populated by the indigenous Ohlone people when the Spanish first arrived in the 1770s. After the Spaniards arrived, smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases greatly reduced the Ohlone population. Many the Ohlone Native Americans who did not die of these diseases were forced into Christian faith by the Spanish. In 1777, Franciscan missionary Padre Junipero Serra founded Mission Santa Clara in San Jose (near what is now the San Jose International Airport runway).
1800s
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. In 1844, a land grant was provided to Lupe Yñigo, one of the few Native Americans to hold land grants. It was first called Rancho Posolmi, in honor of a village of the Ohlone that once stood in the area.
Martin Murphy Jr. came to California with the Murphy family as part of the Stephens–Townsend–Murphy Party in 1844. In 1850, he bought of Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas for $12,500. Murphy established a wheat farm and ranch named Bay View. He had the first wood-frame house in Santa Clara County; it was shipped from New England. In 1861, Murphy allowed the San Francisco and San Jose Rail Road to lay tracks on Bay View and establish Murphy's Station. Lawrence's Station was later established on the southern edge of Bay View. When Murphy died in 1884, the land was divided among his heirs. Parcels of the land were sold starting in 1900 to real estate developer Walter Crossman. The Bay View House was demolished in 1961, but was reconstructed in 2008 as the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum.
In the 1870s, small fruit orchards replaced many large wheat farms, because wheat farming turned uneconomical due to county and property tax laws, imports and soil degradation. In 1871, James M. Dawson and his wife, Eloise (née Jones), established the first commercial fruit cannery in the county. Fruit agriculture for canning soon became a major industry in the county. The invention of the refrigerated rail car further increased the viability of an economy based upon fruit. The fruit orchards became so prevalent that in 1886, the San Jose Board of Trade called Santa Clara County the "Garden of the World".
In the 1880s, Chinese workers made up roughly a third of the farm labor in Santa Clara County. This proportion declined after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. In the 1890s, many immigrants from Italy, the Azores, Portugal, and Japan arrived to work in the orchards.
In 1897, Crossman bought of orchard land from Patrick Murphy to organize and develop the town, which he named Encinal. He advertised the area as "Beautiful Murphy" and later, in the 1900s, as "the City of Destiny".
In February 1899, School District was established. The town's first schoolhouse, School, was constructed at a cost of $4,000 and opened in September 1899. Previously, the closest school had been in Mountain View.
1900s To avoid confusion with Encinal, Alameda County, Sunnyvale adopted its current name on March 24, 1901. The name was chosen to attract new residents from foggy areas near San Francisco.
Sunnyvale continued to grow and in 1904, dried fruit production began. Two years later, Libby, McNeill & Libby, a Chicago meat-packing company, decided to open its first fruit-packing factory in Sunnyvale. Today, a water tower painted to resemble the first Libby's fruit cocktail can label identifies the former site of the factory.
Also in 1906, the Joshua Hendy Iron Works relocated from San Francisco to Sunnyvale after the company's building was destroyed by fire after the 1906 earthquake. The ironworks was the first non-agricultural industry in the town. The company later switched from producing mining equipment to other products such as marine steam engines.
In 1912, the residents of Sunnyvale voted to incorporate and Sunnyvale became an official city.
Fremont High School first opened in 1923.
In 1924, Edwina Benner was elected to her first term as mayor of Sunnyvale. She was the second female mayor in California history.
In 1930, Congress decided to place the West Coast dirigible base in Sunnyvale after "buying" the parcel of farmland bordering the San Francisco Bay from the city for $1.
This naval airfield was later renamed Naval Air Station Moffett and then Moffett Federal Airfield and is commonly called Moffett Field.
In 1939, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the forerunner of NASA) began research at Ames Laboratory.
During World War II, the war economy began a change from the fruit industry to the high-tech industry in Santa Clara County. The Joshua Hendy Iron Works built marine steam engines, naval guns and rocket launchers to aid in the war effort. As the defense industry grew, a shortage of workers in the farm industry was created. Immigrants from Mexico came to Sunnyvale to fill this void of workers.
After the war, the fruit orchards and sweetcorn farms were cleared to build homes, factories, and offices.
In 1950, the volunteer fire department and the paid police department were combined into the department of public safety.
In 1956, the aircraft manufacturer Lockheed moved its headquarters to Sunnyvale.
Since then, numerous high-tech companies have established offices and headquarters in Sunnyvale, including Advanced Micro Devices and Yahoo.
The first prototype of Atari's coin-operated Pong, the first successful video game, was installed in Sunnyvale in August 1972, in a bar named Andy Capp's Tavern, now Rooster T. Feathers. Atari's headquarters were at 1196 Borregas Avenue in north Sunnyvale.
In 1979, an indoor mall called Sunnyvale Town Center opened in what used to be a traditional downtown shopping district. After years of successful operation, the mall started to decline in the 1990s. After numerous changes in plans and ownership, the mall was demolished in 2007.
2000s By 2002, the few remaining orchards had been replaced with homes and shops. There are still city-owned orchards, such as the Heritage Orchard next to the Sunnyvale Community Center.
Sunnyvale celebrated its 100th anniversary on August 25, 2012.
According to the Bay Area Census, there was a total population of 130,885 in households and 875 in group quarters in 2000.
Downtown development
In November 2009, previously closed portions of downtown Sunnyvale's streets reopened as part of the ongoing downtown redevelopment of the Sunnyvale Town Center mall, marking the first time in over three decades that those blocks had been open to vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Part of the project involved building new apartment buildings, but the property was repossessed by Wells Fargo in 2009; the developer countersued, leaving the project in legal limbo through 2015.
The two office buildings are now fully occupied by Uber. Mixed-use developments have been built at the former Town and Country location near the Plaza del Sol just north of Murphy Avenue. By mid 2015, new multistory apartment complexes had opened, including a number of ground-floor businesses, and the lawsuit against Wells Fargo was resolved in the bank's favor. The development was sold to Sares Regis in late 2016. Redwood Square reopened as a park in 2017. Many apartments are occupied, and more are being completed in 2020. A Whole Foods Market and AMC Theatres multiplex opened in October 2020.
Major businesses In the 2010s, Sunnyvale became home to operations from numerous major technology companies, including Apple, LinkedIn (now headquartered in Sunnyvale), Google, Amazon, Meta, Walmart Labs, and 23andMe.
Google announced major development plans in the Moffett Park area in 2017 adjacent to Moffett Field, with these offices ultimately opening in 2022. Amazon and Meta began leasing buildings in Sunnyvale in 2017 and 2021, respectively.
Geography
Sunnyvale is located at .
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and (3.09%) is water. Its elevation is 130 feet above sea level.
Climate Like most of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sunnyvale has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb), with short, cool, wet winters and long, warm, very dry summers. Average daytime summer temperatures are in the high 70s or low 80s, and during the winter, average daytime high temperatures rarely stay below . Snowfall is rare, but on January 21, 1962, and February 5, 1976, measurable snowfall occurred in Sunnyvale and most of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sunnyvale was briefly hit by tornadoes in 1951 and 1998, but they are extremely rare.
Demographics
The 2020 United States census reported that Sunnyvale had a population of 155,805 and a population density of . The racial makeup of Sunnyvale was 46,551 (29.9%) White, 2,228 (1.4%) African American, 1,081 (0.7%) Native American, 77,842 (49.9%) Asian, 491 (0.3%) Pacific Islander, 14,181 (9.1%) from other races, and 13,431 (8.6%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 25,372 persons (16.3%). Non-Hispanic Whites were 27.8% of the population in 2020, compared to 74.7% in 1980.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Sunnyvale's population at 156,577 in 2025.The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Sunnyvale's population at 156,577 as of July 1, 2025.
There were 59,567 households, out of which 16,133 (27%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 31,557 (53.0%) were married opposite-sex couples living together, 4,069 (6.8%) had a female householder with no husband present, 2,908 (4.9%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 3,382 (5.7%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 657 (1.1%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 14,970 households (25.1%) were made up of individuals, and 5.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54. There were 38,750 families (65.0% of all households); the average family size was 3.09.