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Overview
History
Entertainment guide
Buzzing Little
Metropolis
The retail centre of Mountain View is no longer in the downtown
area, it is now in a vast expanse of concrete and tarmac several
blocks away called San Antonio Shopping Center. However Downtown
Mountain View is a very cool and relaxed place with a lot
going on to attract the visitor. This is the undisputed soul
of the city.
The main street, Castro St, offers a mix of Thai, Vietnamese,
Chinese, Italian, Indian and Mexican resturaunts as well as
a host of other foods from throughout the world. There are
nightclubs, some very lively bars, and some of the most popular
places at night are the independant bookshops. Bookstores
in America are a very relaxing place where you can get a coffee,
go and sit on a soft seat and read to your heart's content.
In some stores you'll find such things as an author giving
a talk about his latest book, or a string quartet playing
in the corner. As well as all this you will find an array
of shops selling all sorts of oddities, from the most obscure
ingredients of Chinese food to scented candles and from meditation
seats to wind chimes.
Every year the streets are closed to traffic and come alive
for one weeked during the famous Mountain View Art & Wine
Festival, Mountain View at its best.
History
Before the Spanish came to the Santa Clara Valley, the Ohlone
Indians lived a peaceful life living completely off the
land in a wild area that was dominated by redwood forests.
When the Spaniards did arrive the land of Mountain View was
granted to one Don Mariano Castro who named it "Rancho
Pastoria de los Borregas." This means "Pasture of
the Lambs Ranch." His family's simple farming life carried
on uneventfully until 1846 when California became a part of
the United States.
It was in the run up to the 1930s that the area known as
'Old Mountain View' grew to its present size with a proliferation
of buildings in the style of the old missions, which gives
the downtown area its unique feel. To this day it feels like
it is part of the wild west, as if Zorro is going to swing
in from the rooftops any minute. In the 1930s the area was
just a peaceful, uneventful place where people worked in the
surrounding orchards and canneries, packing up fruit to send
to the world and travelled on the train to downtown San Jose
to see the sights and sounds that big cities of their day
had to offer. However this idylic setting wasn't imune from
the effects of the depression. But in the early 30s the US
government decided to build a naval air station on the west
coast.
The industry that came with the new Naval Air Station at Moffett
Field in Sunnyvale began to alter the landscape, and with
many GIs passing through in the war years, a lot of them were
so taken with the area that they promised to settle there
after the war. And settle there they certainly did, resulting
in a housing boom that displaced a lot of the orchards and
resulted in an explosion of suburban sprawl.
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