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Fremont, CA
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Fremont is a city in California, USA that was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Irvington, Mission San Jose, Niles, and Warm Springs. The area now comprising Fremont and the adjoining cities of Newark (now an enclave within Fremont) and Union City was formerly known as Washington Township. Fremont is located in the southeast area of the San Francisco Bay Area in Alameda County. The city is named after John Charles Frémont, "the Great Pathfinder."
Home to 210,158 people as of a 2005 estimate, Fremont is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Due in large measure to immigration by refugees fleeing the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan Civil War, and small amounts during the Taliban government during the late 1980s and 1990s, Fremont had the largest Afghan population in the United States in 2001. The diverse city demographic includes many Asian ethnic groups, including Indians, Chinese and other Asian groups, concentrated most heavily in the Mission San Jose District.
Home to 210,158 people as of a 2005 estimate, Fremont is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Due in large measure to immigration by refugees fleeing the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan Civil War, and small amounts during the Taliban government during the late 1980s and 1990s, Fremont had the largest Afghan population in the United States in 2001. The diverse city demographic includes many Asian ethnic groups, including Indians, Chinese and other Asian groups, concentrated most heavily in the Mission San Jose District.
Fremont is the sister city to Elizabeth, South Australia, and to Fukaya, Saitama, in Japan.
GeographyFremont is located at (37.542943, -121.982786).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 87.1 square miles (225.6 km²), of which 76.7 square miles (198.6 km²) is land and 10.4 square miles (27.0 km²), 11.97%, is water. Fremont is bordered to the east by hills of the Diablo Range. The most prominent of these hills is Mission Peak, among the tallest points in the region at 2,517 feet (767 m). Mission Peak is a popular hiking spot in the East Bay Area.
PoliticsIn the state legislature Fremont is located in the 10th Senate District, represented by Democrat Ellen Corbett, and in the 20th Assembly District, represented by Democrat Alberto Torrico. Federally, Fremont is located in California's 13th congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of D +22 and is represented by Democrat Pete Stark.
Politically, Fremont leans strongly to the Democratic Party. It voted for Kerry with 66% of the vote.
EducationFremont is home to the Fremont Unified School District and lies within the Ohlone Community College District.
The Fremont Unified School District has five comprehensive high schools for students in grades 9-12: American, Kennedy, Irvington, Mission San Jose and Washington. These five high schools, along with James Logan High School in Union City and Newark Memorial High School in Newark, make up the Mission Valley Athletic League (M.V.A.L.).
In addition to the five comprehensive high schools, the district has a continuation high school (Robertson); an independent study program (Vista); an adult school; five junior high schools for grades 7-8 (Centerville, Hopkins, Horner, Thornton and Walters); and
29 elementary schools (K-6). The district operates the Mission Valley Regional Occupational Programjointly with Newark and New Haven Unified School Districts.
The main campus of Ohlone College is located in Fremont, with a smaller center in Newark. The University of California, Berkeley has an extension campus located in Fremont, and the University of Phoenix Bay Area Campus and Northwestern Polytechnic University and DeVry University offer undergraduate and graduate programs in technology and management areas.
The city is also home to Fremont Christian School and California School for the Deaf, Fremont, which serves Northern California. It shares its campus with the Statewide California School for the Blind.
HistoryThe recorded history of the Fremont area began on June 9, 1797 when Mission San José was founded by the Spaniard Father Fermin de Lasuen. The Mission was established at the site of the Ohlone village of Oroysom. On their second day in the area, the Mission party killed a grizzly bear in Niles Canyon. The first English-speaking visitor to Fremont was the renowned trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith in 1827. The Mission prospered, eventually reaching a population of 1,886 inhabitants in 1831. The influence of the missionaries declined after 1834, when the Mexican government enacted secularization.
The family of Don José de Jesus Vallejo, brother of Mariano Vallejo, was the most influential in Fremont in the late colonial era. His family owned a large rancho and built a flour mill at the mouth of Niles Canyon. In 1846 they were visited by the town's namesake John C. Frémont. Fremont grew rapidly at the time of the Gold Rush. Agriculture dominated the economy with grapes, nursery plants and olives as leading crops. In 1868 a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on the Hayward Fault collapsed buildings throughout Fremont, ruining Mission San José and its outbuildings. Until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused its destruction, Fremont's Palmdale Winery was the largest in California. The ruins of the Palmdale Winery are still visible near the Five Corners in Irvington.
From 1912-1916 the Niles section of Fremont was the earliest home of California's motion picture industry Charlie Chaplin filmed several movies in Fremont, most notably "The Tramp." Fremont was incorporated in 1956, when five towns in the area came together to form a city. Fremont became more industrialized in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1980s brought an automotive assembly plant of Toyota and General Motors called NUMMI. A boom in high-tech employment in the 1980s to the late 1990s, especially in the Warm Springs District, caused rapid development in the city.
Constituent townsCenterville, Irvington, Mission San Jose, Niles, and Warm Springs make up the five former independent towns which combined to form Fremont. Today, these places are no longer separate communities and are usually considered districts of the city of Fremont. The town of Newark declined to join Fremont, and is now an enclave.
CentervilleCenterville was perhaps the main town in Washington Township. The area is served by two high schools, American High School and Washington High School. It also has two junior high schools, Thornton Junior High School and Centerville Junior High School.
Centerville includes all of North and most of Central Fremont. The Centerville Pioneer Cemetery contains the burial places of many of the city's founding pioneers.
Centerville is the focal point of a sizeable Afghan community, and the area is informally known in some circles as "Little Kabul" . The best-selling novel The Kite Runner is partly set in Fremont's Afghan community. A 99 Ranch Market is one of many East Asian businesses in the area.
IrvingtonIrvington is centered on the intersection of Fremont Blvd. and Washington Blvd. Irvington has many antique shops and restaurants, many of which were established in the late 1800s. The neighborhood was named after Irvington, New Jersey, the birthplace of a local railroad executive at the time. The neighborhood is ethnically mixed and is primarily working class. The local high schools are Irvington High School, Robertson High School and John F. Kennedy High School. The Irvington district has two main neighborhoods: Irvington Woods and the Irvington Square.
Mission San JoseNestled at the base of Fremont's rolling hills is the Mission San José, one of the oldest of the historic Spanish missions in California, which gave its name to this historic town. The church building that exists today is a re-construction of the original mission church (completed in 1982). One side of the original mission quadrangle remains and houses a museum.
Fremont's community college, Ohlone College, is situated one block away from the mission and serves over 12,000 students.
Mission San Jose has the highest concentration of Asian Americans in Fremont - over 50% of the population as of the 2000 census. The local high school is Mission San Jose High School. The median family income for the Mission San Jose area (ZIP code 94539) exceeded $114,595 in 2005. Owing to an influx of professionals and other affluent families seeking access to the top-performing local public schools, Mission San Jose's median home value reached $831,000 in 2006, earning the community a rank of 237 on Forbes magazine's list of the 500 most affluent communities in the United States.
In 2001 an attempt by community organizations in the Mission San Jose district to withdraw from the Fremont Unified School District caused state-wide controversy and led to accusations of racism from both sides. The attempt was prompted by a re-drawing of the school enrollment areas, under which some Mission San Jose residents would send their children to Horner Junior High and Irvington High schools. The controversial effort to secede was dropped later that year. Fremont's public schools continue to rank among the best in California.
NilesUnlike most cities in the Bay Area, Niles retains a small town feel anchored by a tight-knit community. Geography partly explains the community's cohesion; in addition to sitting against the base of Fremont's hills, the town is physically divided from other parts of Fremont and neighboring Union City by Mission Boulevard (State Route 238) to the east and north, Alameda Creek to the south, Union Pacific Railroad to the west and southeast, and the Quarry Lakes to the southwest. Old Town Niles features its own library, post office, and silent movie theater as well as a large number of antique and craft stores. The town is named after Addison Niles.
Niles was the home of one of the first West Coast motion picture companies, Essanay Studios. Charlie Chaplin and Bronco Billy Anderson filmed some of their most famous silent movies in Niles. Scenic Niles Canyon stretches between Niles and Sunol. The nonprofit Niles Essenay Film Museum offers both artifacts of Niles' early years, and each Saturday evening, screenings of early-twentieth-century silent films, many of which were filmed locally.
The Niles Canyon Railway runs along Alameda Creek, and carries passengers on weekend excursions, including a holiday 'train of lights' which is extremely popular - tickets for these trains typically sell out by early October. The Niles Canyon Railroad has a small but well-maintained collection of historic rail stock.
Of special note is the annual antique fair and flea market which takes place on the last Sunday in August. The entire town turns out with things to sell as early as Saturday morning, with bargain hunters from the Bay Area and beyond visiting in search of bargains. Niles is also home to the Fremont Gurdwara, which serves the large American Sikh community of Fremont as a religious shrine open to not only the Sikhs but to everyone regardless of their caste and religion. For more information on Niles, please visit The Niles Main Street Association Page.
Warm SpringsThe Warm Springs district is the southernmost portion of Fremont whose hub is the Warm Springs and Mission Boulevard intersection. Due to its proximity to the center of Silicon Valley, Warm Springs has attracted the headquarters of many high-tech companies including Nielsen Norman Group, Corsair Memory and Lexar of the US as well as foreign high-tech companies such as Elitegroup Computer Systems, Asus and Universal abit. The district is also home to blue-collar industry. NUMMI, a joint automobile manufacturing plant for General Motors and Toyota is the city's largest employer.
Warm Springs also serves as commercial center for the mainly residential Mission San Jose district, especially since the construction of Pacific Commons, a large, modern shopping center. The large Asian population in Mission San Jose comes to Warm Springs for authentic Asian stores such as the Lion Supermarket and the Little Taipei shopping center, as well as more traditional supermarkets such as Safeway .
Currently, Warm Springs is included in a study to determine the feasibility of extending the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system further south.
Notable peopleJulie PinsonDon HertzfeldtKristi Yamaguchi Gary Plummer Dennis Eckersley Helen Wills MoodyM.C. Hammer Emcee Lynx Abdul Rashid Benish Len WisemanKhaled HosseiniRyan SinnDenise MatthewsDaniel HulsemanBaseball stadiumOn 7 November 2006, reports surfaced that the Bay Area's American League baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, plans to build a 36,000-seat baseball stadium in Fremont, to be called Cisco Field A formal announcement given a short time later (from the franchise and the city of Fremont) confirmed that the team will relocate from the city of Oakland and move to Cisco Field in South Fremont in 2010 or 2011. A sizeable portion of the team's fan base already resides in the southern Alameda County area; the new stadium's closer proximity to the lucrative Silicon Valley market is also seen as a positive aspect of the relocation. There is much controversy regarding this proposal, for many reasons, including the lack of public transportation, chronic and severe traffic congestion, wetlands intrusion, deterioration in quality of life, loss of business taxes, and financial doubts.
On February 27, 2007, the San Jose Mercury News reported that just across the street from the envisioned ballpark village site sits Scott Specialty Gases, a distributor of highly toxic materials used in semi-conductor manufacturing. Fremont officials advised team owner Lew Wolff last year that he'd need to either relocate the plant or find another way to mitigate the potential hazard posed by a toxic gas cloud floating over a ballpark filled with 32,000 people. This is seen as a major obstacle in getting a stadium built in Fremont.
On May 10, 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the team had signed a contract to buy of land in Fremont
External linksOrientationCity of Fremont official web pageFremontOnline - Community web site
BusinessFremont Chamber of CommerceNiles Main Street AssociationMission San Jose Chamber of CommerceCenterville Business District Webpage on the City of Fremont's WebsiteWarm Springs Business and Community Association
Information pagesAlameda County Library, Fremont Library BranchFremontOnline map of Fremont neighborhoods
List of News Sources
"Little Kabul" in USA Today, September 19, 2001
History of Fremont by Philip HolmesThe Museum of Local HistoryModern Photography of Fremont Area
CommunityFremont EventsFremont Festival of the Arts - Billed as the largest free street festival on the west coast, always the first weekend in AugustFremont's 50th Anniversary Celebration (2006)List of Community OrganizationsFremont Youth Today - City of Fremont's teen newspaperFremont Information - City of Fremont information directory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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By NorthAmericanAdventures
8 days
Summer Break West Coast in 8 Days, starting with 2 days at the spectacular Grand Canyon, then heading over to Las Vegas for 3 more, before trekking it to California, where you'll hit 3 Southern California hot spots: Hollywood, Disneyland, and San Diego! A fantabulous trip to take with a group of 3-4 friends to split the gas/hotel costs.
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By Editor's Choice
8 days
Summer Break West Coast in 8 Days, starting with 2 days at the spectacular Grand Canyon, then heading over to Las Vegas for 3 more, before trekking it to California, where you'll hit 3 Southern California hot spots: Hollywood, Disneyland, and San Diego!
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1 person reviewed Fremont
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at 10:55AM May 29, 2008
Really, just a city I pass through on my way to & fro to family.
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