Historical Evolution of Los Altos from Orchards to Wealthy Silicon Valley Zip Code
History and Transformation of Los Altos, California
Los Altos, California has undergone a remarkable evolution from quiet orchard lands to one of Silicon Valley’s most affluent suburban enclaves. Founded in the early 20th century as a planned railroad town amid apricot and cherry orchards, Los Altos today boasts some of the nation’s highest real estate values and a community of tech industry leaders. This report chronicles the city’s history across key periods – from early Spanish land grants and agricultural roots, through mid-century suburbanization, to the modern Silicon Valley boom – highlighting the pivotal events, demographic shifts, and planning decisions that shaped Los Altos. Major milestones from its 1906 founding by a railroad executive to its post-war incorporation in 1952 and the rise of a high-income residential “village” are detailed. A timeline of key events is included, along with discussions of transportation developments (rail and highways), the decline of the orchard economy, land-use and zoning choices that preserved Los Altos’s semi-rural character, and notable residents and moments (including the founding of Apple in a local garage).
Early Settlement and Agricultural Roots
Los Altos occupies land that was originally home to the Ohlone Native Americans and later part of Spanish and Mexican land grants in the 19th century. During the Mexican period, large ranchos such as Rancho La Purísima Concepción and Rancho San Antonio encompassed what is now the Los Altos area losaltoshistory.org. These ranch lands were used for cattle grazing until the Gold Rush and American annexation of California (1840s–1850s) brought new settlers. By the late 19th century, the Santa Clara Valley’s fertile soil and mild climate gave rise to a thriving fruit orchard economy, earning it the nickname “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” Apricots, plums, cherries, and prunes blanketed thousands of acres, including the area of Los Altos.
Apricot orchards once covered the Los Altos area, part of the “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” In 1901, orchardist J. Gilbert Smith planted five acres of Blenheim apricots by his farmhouse (eventually expanding to 15 acres), land that today forms the Los Altos Civic Center Heritage Orchard punchmagazine.com. This living landmark, preserved when the city purchased Smith’s orchard in 1954 to build City Hall, commemorates the region’s rich agricultural past punchmagazine.com.
Throughout the late 1800s, Los Altos remained an unincorporated farming community with family-run orchards and a rural lifestyle. The first apricot orchards in what became Los Altos were established around the 1880s–1900s. Notably, J. Gilbert Smith (a young carpenter who worked at nearby Stanford University) bought land in 1901 and planted apricot trees, biking between his orchard and Stanford to save money. His success reflected the valley’s ideal conditions – mild climate, fertile soil, and emerging transportation routes – that enabled fruit growers to thrive. By the turn of the 20th century, the area’s blossoming orchards each spring created a stunning landscape of pink and white blooms, symbolizing an agricultural paradise.
This agrarian heritage set the stage for Los Altos’ later development. Early settlers included not only farmers but also educated professionals from San Francisco and academics from Stanford who built country estates among the orchards, attracted by the beauty and tranquility. Even in its rural days, Los Altos began cultivating a tradition of educated affluence and environmental appreciation, as Stanford professors and Bay Area business leaders established gentleman farms and summer homes in the vicinity This early blend of agriculture and affluence influenced Los Altos’ character, laying a foundation for the community values (education, open space, quality of life) that would persist through suburbanization.
Founding of Los Altos and the Railroad (1906–1930s)
The modern town of Los Altos traces its birth to 1906, when Paul Shoup, a Southern Pacific Railroad executive, spearheaded a plan to create a new town and railroad stop in the orchards between Palo Alto and Mountain View losaltosca.gov. In April 1906 – just a week before the great San Francisco earthquake – Shoup and a group of investors formed the Altos Land Company and acquired 140 acres of ranch land from Sarah Winchester, the widow of the rifle magnate William Winchester losaltosca.go. (Sarah Winchester, famous for her “Mystery House” in San Jose, owned a large farm in the area; she insisted the railroad purchase her entire property rather than just a strip for tracks, leaving the company with excess land to develop en.wikipedia.org.) Shoup’s group bought the surplus acreage and mapped out a planned townsite to serve a new Southern Pacific “cutoff” rail line. They chose the name “Los Altos,” Spanish for “the heights,” as the land was the highest point along the new route between Mayfield (south Palo Alto) and Los Gatos losaltosca.gov.
In March 1907, the Altos Land Company held an outdoor barbecue and land sale to entice buyers for the first town lots losaltosca.gov. Prospective residents arrived for free barbecue and promotional tours, and many purchased parcels on the spot. This event, held near today’s Main Street and Foothill Expressway, marked the birth of Los Altos as a community losaltosca.gov. Soon, a small village nucleus formed around the new Los Altos train depot. Southern Pacific completed the Los Gatos cutoff railroad by 1908, allowing direct train service from Los Altos north to San Francisco (about 60 minutes) and south to San Jose (30 minutes) en.wikipedia.org. The first depot was a simple pair of freight cars; by 1913 a proper Craftsman-style station building opened at 288 First Street, praised as “one of the prettiest on the Peninsula” at its debut. At its peak, 12 steam trains a day stopped at Los Altos, carrying commuters and hauling apricot harvests to market.
The town grew slowly but steadily in these early decades. By 1910, a Los Altos School District had been formed to serve local farm families (and it eventually educated children across a broad unincorporated area, including what are now Los Altos Hills and parts of Palo Alto) losaltosca.gov. A handful of businesses opened downtown to serve the community: for example, one of the first buildings on Main Street was Eschenbruecher’s hardware store in 1908, followed by a general store and the Shoup Building by 1910 losaltosca.gov. The Los Altos Men’s Club (founded 1907) and other civic groups sprang up, and a grammar school was built. Los Altos was carving out an identity as a “village” amid the orchards – a peaceful residential enclave for commuters. Indeed, Shoup and his partners explicitly marketed Los Altos as an exclusive “bucolic residential commuter community” for businessmen, offering a rural atmosphere with convenient rail access to city jobs en.wikipedia.org. Early residents were often well-to-do professionals (drawn by Shoup’s connections in San Francisco society) as well as long-time orchard farming families en.wikipedia.org.
Through the 1920s and 1930s, Los Altos remained unincorporated but continued to develop gradually. Some Stanford University faculty chose to live in the Los Altos area during this period, building country homes on large lots – foreshadowing the community’s later status as an educated, affluent suburb. Likewise, affluent San Francisco families built a few estate homes in the nearby foothills (what later became Los Altos Hills) during the interwar years. Yet the predominant character was still rural: fruit orchards and open fields were the dominant landscape, and the town’s name “Los Altos” informally came to refer to the broader farming region served by the train and school district losaltosca.gov. By 1930, roughly 2,900 people lived in the greater Los Altos area (not yet an official city) en.wikipedia.org. The Great Depression slowed development, but Los Altos’ quiet growth continued. In the 1940s, as World War II raged, Los Altos was still a small cluster of homes and shops surrounded by orchards, with many residents involved in agriculture or commuting via train or early roads like El Camino Real and San Antonio Road.
Post-War Suburban Boom and City Incorporation (1940s–1950s)
After World War II, Los Altos experienced explosive growth as part of the broader suburban boom in Santa Clara Valley. Returning veterans, war-time industrial expansion in the Bay Area, and the Baby Boom created surging demand for housing. The orchards that had defined Los Altos began rapidly giving way to tract housing and suburban development. Indeed, the population of the Los Altos area “exploded after World War II,” transforming the community from a rural village into a fast-growing suburb losaltosca.gov. New subdivisions filled with ranch-style houses were built on former apricot and cherry orchards throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this period, many long-time orchard owners sold their land to developers. The result was a dramatic landscape change: by the mid-1950s, large swaths of orchard land had been converted into residential neighborhoods, and the remaining farms were increasingly edged by homes and schools.
Recognizing the need for local governance and planning amid this rapid change, residents moved to formally incorporate the town. On December 1, 1952, Los Altos was officially incorporated as a city, becoming the eleventh city in Santa Clara County losaltosca.gov. Upon incorporation, the new City of Los Altos encompassed not only the original downtown area by Main and State Streets but also many newly developed neighborhoods that had sprung up in the post-war years. The decision to incorporate was driven by a desire for local control over zoning and development, as neighboring cities were also expanding. (Notably, the unincorporated foothill areas to the west remained separate and later incorporated as the Town of Los Altos Hills in 1956, which pursued even stricter low-density zoning with a minimum 1-acre lot size to preserve its rural character.)
City leaders in the 1950s set a tone of deliberate, controlled growth. The first City Council and Planning Commission established land-use policies to maintain Los Altos as primarily residential with a small-town feel. Commercial development was limited to a few small downtown blocks and neighborhood shopping strips, while vast tracts were zoned for single-family homes on generous lots. This was a conscious choice: residents valued the semi-rural ambiance and did not want heavy industry or large commercial centers within city limit. The 1954 purchase of Gilbert Smith’s orchard for the Civic Center (with the apricot trees preserved as a condition) is an example of early city planning balancing development with heritage punchmagazine.com. New public facilities – schools, parks, churches – were built to serve the growing population, which jumped from about 3,000 in 1950 to nearly 20,000 by 1960 as the new city’s limits expanded and filled out.
Infrastructure developments also reshaped Los Altos in the 1950s–60s. The proliferation of the automobile fundamentally changed local transportation. As car ownership became universal, fewer people took the train, and ridership on the Los Altos branch line plummeted. In 1964, Southern Pacific ceased railroad service to Los Altos, ending the era that had begun with Shoup’s railroad vision losaltosca.gov. The old rail right-of-way was soon repurposed as Foothill Expressway, a multi-lane arterial road completed in the late 1960s that now bypasses downtown along the route of the tracks losaltosca.gov. Meanwhile, the new Interstate 280 freeway was constructed just west of Los Altos (through Los Altos Hills) in the mid-1960s, further facilitating automobile commuting up and down the Peninsula. With these highways, Los Altos gained convenient car access to job centers (San Francisco is about 35 miles north, San Jose 15 miles south), reducing the community’s isolation but also reinforcing its bedroom-community status.
By the end of the 1950s, Los Altos had firmly transitioned from an orchard town to a classic American suburb. It was characterized by winding residential streets, good schools, and a quaint downtown – in essence, “suburban perfection” in the heart of the booming Santa Clara Valley. Yet unlike some areas that urbanized with high densities, Los Altos intentionally kept a low-density, village atmosphere. The newly incorporated city’s policies (and those of adjacent Los Altos Hills) ensured that the orchard legacy lived on in the city’s layout: wide lots, abundant greenery, and even vestiges of actual orchards within city limits.
Development, Zoning, and Community Character
From the 1960s onward, Los Altos officials and residents maintained a strong commitment to preserving the town’s residential character and semi-rural charm. Key to this was zoning and land-use policy. Los Altos adopted strict zoning ordinances that limited commercial and industrial development – there are no industrial parks or major shopping malls in town – and mandated large lot sizes in most neighborhoods. To this day, the minimum lot size for a detached single-family home in much of Los Altos is about one-quarter acre (approx. 11,000 sq ft) en.wikipedia.org, larger than in many other cities. Tracts of ranch-style houses built in the 1950s often had lots of 1/4 to 1/2 acre, creating a park-like feel. This low-density pattern was a deliberate choice to avoid overcrowding and to mimic the spaciousness of the earlier orchard lands.
City planning also enforced a “village” scale for the downtown commercial district. Buildings were kept to 1–2 stories in height, and a strict height limit remains in place to this day to protect views and the human scale of Main Street en.wikipedia.org. As a result, Los Altos’ downtown has a small-town feel with boutique shops and cafes, lacking high-rises. The layout of roads further supports this atmosphere: the downtown is encircled by arterial roads and bypasses (Foothill Expwy, San Antonio Rd, Edith Ave), allowing through-traffic to bypass Main and State Streets, thus keeping the village core relatively quiet and pedestrian-friendly en.wikipedia.org. There are few traffic lights in the residential areas, and until recently even downtown Los Altos famously had no traffic signals on its Main Street.
Moreover, to retain a semi-rural ambience, Los Altos historically did not install sidewalks on many residential streets and avoided excessive street lighting. Many neighborhood streets have broad dirt shoulders instead of sidewalks, and limited streetlights, creating a less urban, more country-like setting (and also preserving mature trees close to the roadway) en.wikipedia.org. This approach hearkens back to the town’s rural past and differentiates it from denser cities. The city civic center itself was designed unconventionally: rather than a grand civic plaza, Los Altos placed its City Hall, library, and police station in a parklike setting amid an apricot orchard (the preserved Gilbert Smith orchard) en.wikipedia.org. To this day, visitors conducting business at City Hall stroll past gnarled apricot trees – a tangible reminder of Los Altos’ agrarian roots in the middle of suburbia.
Los Altos’ political decisions also shaped its development relative to its neighbors. The incorporation of Los Altos Hills in 1956 just west of Los Altos ensured that the adjacent hillsides would remain ultra-low-density (1-acre minimum zoning, no sidewalks or streetlights at all), reinforcing an overall sense of open space around the area. Los Altos, together with Los Altos Hills, became known for strict residential zoning and slow-growth policies. Over the decades, the city consistently resisted pressures for high-density housing or large-scale commercial projects. This sometimes led to political debates (especially in recent years with regional housing mandates), but historically the city managed to largely avoid the intense development that transformed other Valley communities. As one account notes, Los Altos “developed through careful planning that preserved its rural character while accommodating suburban growth”, with residents determined to “maintain the low-density, residential character that attracted them”.
Community institutions in Los Altos also reinforced a stable suburban profile. The public schools (operated by Los Altos School District for K-8 and Mountain View–Los Altos Union High School District) became some of California’s top-performing schools, reflecting the highly educated population and strong local support for education. (All seven elementary schools and both high schools serving Los Altos consistently rank among the state’s best, with high rates of graduates attending elite universities.) The presence of excellent schools in turn attracted more affluent families to settle in Los Altos, creating a virtuous cycle of high property values and investment in education. In addition, the city fostered many local volunteer organizations, from garden clubs to cultural associations, which enhanced civic life and preserved historical memory (for example, the Los Altos History Museum, opened in 2001 next to the civic orchard, actively documents the city’s heritage).
By the 1970s, Los Altos was essentially built-out in terms of land area: nearly all its 6.5 square miles were developed with single-family homes, parks, schools, and small business districts. The population growth slowed markedly compared to the post-war boom, stabilizing around 25,000 through the 1970s–1990s en.wikipedia.org. Because of the lack of vacant land and limited new construction, the city’s population only inched upward (reaching ~28,000 by 2010 and 31,625 by 2020) en.wikipedia.org. During these decades, Los Altos matured into a tranquil, affluent suburb known for its leafy streets and high quality of life. Long-time residents worked to keep it that way, even as the surrounding region began to undergo an economic metamorphosis driven by technology.
Silicon Valley Era and Rising Affluence (1970s–Present)
In the late 20th century, Santa Clara County shed its fruit orchards and earned a new moniker: Silicon Valley. The semiconductor and computer industries boomed in the 1970s and 1980s (with companies like Intel, HP, Apple, and dozens of startups), followed by the internet and software boom of the 1990s–2000s (Google, Facebook, and many more). While Los Altos did not host large tech campuses – its zoning remained residential – the city benefited enormously from its proximity to Silicon Valley’s innovation centers. Stanford University (just 5 miles away), the Stanford Industrial Park, and major employers in neighboring Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino drew a highly educated, high-income workforce. Many of these professionals chose to live in Los Altos for its suburban amenities and prestige. As a result, over the past few decades Los Altos has evolved into an “executive enclave” for the tech industry’s elite.
By the 1980s, Los Altos was already one of the wealthiest towns in the region. This trend only accelerated. Longtime orchard growers and early residents gave way (often literally, through property sales) to engineers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. The demographic profile shifted: whereas in 1970 Los Altos was largely middle-class and almost entirely white, by 2020 it had become extremely affluent and more diverse. The median household income in Los Altos today exceeds $240,000 (as of the 2020 Census) losaltosca.gov, among the highest in California, and many households earn far more (the Census reports a median of “$250,000+” given that it tops out the scale) data.census.gov. The city’s per capita income is about $143,000 en.wikipedia.org. Over 78% of adults have a bachelor’s or higher degree . Demographically, one notable change has been the growth of the Asian-American population in Los Altos, reflecting the influx of tech professionals of Chinese and Indian heritage. In the 2010 census about 23.5% of Los Altos residents were of Asian descent; by 2020, Asians comprised 35.3% of the population en.wikipedia.org – more than one-third – while the white share had dropped to about 53.6% en.wikipedia.org. Los Altos’ status as a desirable locale for internationally born tech workers and their families has added to the community’s diversity and globally oriented culture.
Perhaps the most conspicuous impact of the Silicon Valley boom on Los Altos has been the skyrocketing of real estate values. Already by the 1990s, Los Altos homes routinely sold for over $1 million. In the 2000s and 2010s, prices climbed further into the millions. The average lot with a modest mid-century home often became a teardown for a new custom-built mansion, given the high land value. As of the mid-2020s, the median home sale price in Los Altos is around $4.2 million losaltosca.gov, and many properties sell in the $5–10 million range. The city consistently ranks among the most expensive real estate markets in the United States. In 2017, for example, Forbes magazine ranked Los Altos ZIP code 94022 as the 3rd most expensive in the entire country (median home price $7.75 million at that time) en.wikipedia.org. (The adjacent Los Altos ZIP 94024 was ranked 48th with a $3.43 million median en.wikipedia.org.) More recently, in 2024, Los Altos 94022 was noted as the 6th most expensive ZIP code in the U.S., with a typical home value around $4.5 million architecturaldigest.com. Multiple surveys have also cited Los Altos as one of the top five wealthiest cities in America based on per capita income and net worth en.wikipedia.org. This extraordinary affluence is a direct result of the tech boom, as many early employees and founders of successful companies became very wealthy and invested in prime Bay Area real estate like Los Altos.
An aerial view of modern Los Altos shows its tree-lined neighborhoods, low-density layout, and integrated schools (visible is Los Altos High School’s campus in foreground). The city’s strict zoning and large lot sizes create a green, park-like residential environment that has attracted Silicon Valley’s elite. By the 2020s, Los Altos was ranked among the most affluent communities in the U.S., with median home values around $4–5 million architecturaldigest.com and a median household income over $240,000 losaltosca.gov.
Despite (or because of) its wealth, Los Altos has remained a primarily residential “bedroom community.” The city has very few large employers within its borders; in fact, the local school district is the top employer, and small medical offices, grocery stores, and the civic administration make up much of the rest en.wikipedia.org. Most working residents commute to jobs in neighboring cities or telecommute. This dynamic has sometimes presented challenges – for instance, the downtown business district has had to compete with bigger retail centers in nearby Palo Alto and Mountain View, and there have been efforts to keep the downtown lively despite the lack of evening foot traffic (Los Altos notably has no hotels or movie theater, and only recently have more restaurants and cafés moved in). City politics often grapple with how to revitalize downtown while preserving its village character. In the mid-1990s and 2000s, debates arose about allowing more mixed-use development or taller buildings downtown, but even today the core zoning permits only two-story buildings, and the town has resisted chain stores in favor of locally owned boutiques. These choices underscore Los Altos’s emphasis on quality of life and community feel over commercial expansion.
Los Altos’ proximity to Stanford University has had subtler influences as well. From its earliest days (with Gilbert Smith biking to Stanford, or professors building country homes) to the present (many Stanford faculty choose to live in Los Altos for the schools and quiet neighborhoods), the intellectual and entrepreneurial spirit of Stanford permeates the community. The city is conveniently located near Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park – the famous hub of venture capital firms – and many venture capital partners and startup founders reside in Los Altos. This means that high-powered business decisions and networking often happen within Los Altos’s confines, even though the companies themselves might be elsewhere. In essence, Los Altos has become an enclave where Silicon Valley’s successful converge to live, raise families, and invest in the community, while still being actively engaged in the tech economy. This is reflected in civic life through well-funded school foundations, tech-oriented community events, and philanthropy (for example, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, one of Silicon Valley’s major charitable foundations, is headquartered in Los Altos en.wikipedia.org).
Finally, the social profile of Los Altos in recent decades includes many notable residents and events that have contributed to its prestige. Perhaps the most famous is the role of Los Altos in the birth of Apple Inc. In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak famously launched Apple from the Jobs family’s modest ranch house in Los Altos. In the garage of 2066 Crist Drive, they assembled the first 50 Apple I computers, effectively putting Los Altos into Silicon Valley lore facebook.com. Today that house is a designated historical site, recognized by the Los Altos Historical Commission for its significance as the company’s founding location, businessinsider.com. Many locals still drive by the quiet suburban home where a $2 trillion company had its start. Over the years, Los Altos has been home to other tech luminaries (executives from Google, Facebook, and Apple among them) – for example, Google co-founder Sergey Brin lived in the Los Altos area for a time – and to leaders in other fields. Earlier notable residents included writer Ida Coolbrith (California’s first poet laureate, who spent her later years in Los Altos) and famed orchestra conductor Pierre Monteux (who owned an estate in Los Altos Hills). The presence of such figures has kept Los Altos in the broader public eye as an enclave of success and innovation. But in keeping with the town’s understated ethos, many of these high-profile individuals live quietly, and Los Altos itself continues to project a low-key, community-oriented identity rather than ostentatious wealth.
In summary, over roughly 120 years, Los Altos transformed from a rural orchard community into an affluent Silicon Valley suburb, yet it has carefully managed that transformation in a way that honors its history and maintains a distinctive small-town feel. The apricot orchards that once defined the landscape have nearly all vanished – nearly all, but not entirely. The city’s last heritage orchard, a few acres of gnarled trees by City Hall, still produces apricots each summer and invites residents to recall the era when Los Altos’s riches were measured in fruit baskets, not stock options. Meanwhile, just beyond those trees, Teslas glide down Foothill Expressway where steam trains once chugged, and downtown coffee shops hum with venture capital gossip in a building that was once the railroad station. Los Altos today is a blend of past and present: a “village” of peace and greenery that sits at the heart of the world’s most dynamic tech economy.
Timeline of Key Historical Milestones
Year Milestone Pre-1800s Indigenous and Spanish Era: Area inhabited by Ohlone native people. Spanish colonization (late 1700s) brings missions nearby (Mission Santa Clara) and the land later becomes part of Mexican land grants (e.g. Rancho La Purísima Concepción, 1840) losaltoshistory.org.Late 1800sOrchard Farming: American settlers develop fruit orchards across Santa Clara Valley. Los Altos area is covered in apricot, plum, and cherry orchards – the “Valley of Heart’s Delight”. Farming and ranching dominate the local economy.1906 Town Founded: Southern Pacific RR executive Paul Shoup forms the Altos Land Company and buys 140 acres from Sarah Winchester to create a new town and railroad stop losaltosca.gov. The town is named “Los Altos” (“the heights”).1907 First Land Sale: Altos Land Co. hosts a barbecue land auction (March 1907) selling the first residential lots in Los Altos losaltosca.gov. A train stop is established on the under-construction Palo Alto–Los Gatos line.1908 Rail Line Opens: Southern Pacific’s Los Gatos Cutoff rail line begins service, with Los Altos as a station. Commuter service to San Francisco (~60 minutes) and San Jose (~30 minutes) makes Los Altos a viable commuter village en.wikipedia.org.1913 Train Station Built: A permanent Craftsman-style depot is completed at First Street in Los Altos. At peak usage, 12 trains a day serve the town. Early downtown businesses and a school form around the station.1910s–1940s Slow Growth: Los Altos remains unincorporated but gradually grows. Stanford faculty and SF professionals build country homes in the area during the 1920s–30s. Orchards still dominate. Population ~2,900 by 1930 en.wikipedia.org.1952Incorporation: Los Altos residents incorporate as a city on Dec 1, 1952, to control rapid post-WWII development losaltosca.gov. City of Los Altos (pop. ~6,200 in 1953) becomes the 11th city in Santa Clara County. 1950s Suburban Boom: Orchard lands rapidly subdivided into tract housing. Population surges to ~19,700 by 1960 en.wikipedia.org. City adopts strict zoning – primarily single-family residential – and creates Los Altos Civic Center (buying a 15-acre apricot orchard in 1954 to preserve part as a heritage orchard) punchmagazine.com.1956Los Altos Hills Forms: The adjacent foothill community incorporates separately as Town of Los Altos Hills (with 1-acre minimum lot zoning) to preserve its rural nature, reinforcing low-density character of the greater Los Altos area.1964 Railroad Closes: Declining ridership leads Southern Pacific to end train service to Los Altos losaltosca.gov. The railroad tracks are removed and the corridor is converted into Foothill Expressway, an arterial road, by 1966 losaltosca.gov.1960sFreeway & Growth: Interstate 280 is constructed west of Los Altos, improving car access. Los Altos is essentially built-out by late ’60s; population growth slows. Downtown Los Altos thrives as a small village shopping area for local needs. 1976 Apple Founded: On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak officially founded Apple Computer in the Jobs family garage at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos. The first 50 Apple I computers are assembled here businessinsider.com. (The home later becomes a historic landmark.)1980sTech Wealth Arrives: As Silicon Valley booms, Los Altos’ desirability soars. Tech executives, entrepreneurs, and Stanford academics increasingly move to Los Altos for its schools and lifestyle. Older homes begin to be remodeled or replaced by larger custom homes.1990sRising Home Values: Los Altos’ median home prices cross $1 million mark in the dot-com era. Downtown sees some revitalization efforts; the train station building is repurposed (eventually becoming a café). The city maintains a “village” charm amid regional growth.2000s Top Rankings: Los Altos consistently ranks among the wealthiest small cities in the U.S. In 2007, Forbes lists Los Altos zip codes among the most expensive in America en.wikipedia.org. Demographics show increasing diversity, with Asian-American families a growing segment of the population.2010s Heritage and Modernization: City celebrates the apricot orchard heritage with events and museum exhibits. In 2013 the Jobs garage is designated a Los Altos historic site. By 2018, Los Altos is the 5th wealthiest city in the U.S. (by ACS data) en.wikipedia.org. Median household income reaches ~$240k, median home prices ~$3–4M.2020sCurrent Status: Los Altos remains a primarily residential, highly affluent community of ~31,000 en.wikipedia.org. It is known for excellent schools, tree-lined neighborhoods, and a quaint downtown. Home values average $4–5 million architecturaldigest.com, and it retains one of the last civic apricot orchards in Silicon Valley as a link to its past.
Sources: Local historical archives and museum records losaltosca.gov en.wikipedia.org; City of Los Altos information losaltosca.gov; news and publications on Los Altos history, businessinsider.com; U.S. Census data.