Talk:Santa Clara Valley

message: Do you guys think we should merge "Santa Clara Valley" into South Bay (or vice versa)? The articles have very similar information and can be made into one detailed article. Gamer9832 (talk) 23:25, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really.....But it's still fine.--Yhz1221 (talk) 03:30, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

text: Against - I have several reasons for keeping the article separate. First, the region historically is the precursor to Silicon Valley. SC Valley may not the be the agriculture commercial center it once was, but there should be a means to document this. Hence the article. Second, if the article were to be merged, it should be the Silicon Valley article. I am not in favor of that either, but at least it would track geographically. IMO, the South Bay is fine as it is, a somewhat short "definition style" article. Third, the region is significant enough that its been the sole subject of several books, has a museum dedicated to it (History San Jose), plus the Smithsonian and Ellis Island museums have both had exhibits focused on the region, its history, and cultural and immigration significance. Just my 2 cents... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 16:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge this Article into South Bay 

message: Does anyone have a map of this region? Runner1928 (talk) 02:34, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: Non-neutral point of view located in the Silicon Valley part of the article, I added the Lopsided template.
Someone should fix it. Or correct me if I'm wrong.
Either way, the "is"/"or rather was" bit is total bs. And then the unnecessary part about underpaid latina workers and well paid white males. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's pretty correct, but it doesn't belong in this article at all.5.28.110.2 (talk) 19:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality dispute 

message: This is a user in Chinese Wikipedia. I noticed that in Chinese version, this article was redirected to Silicon Valley. I believe that the article of Silicon Valley should focus on the technological development of the surrounding region, while this article should focus on the geographic and historical factors of this region. Hence, I just canceled the redirection. I wonder if I am getting this right.Johnson.Xia (talk) 07:41, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should this article be merged to Silicon Valley? 

message: A request for comment is underway at Talk:Silicon Valley#RfC: Inclusion criteria of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara Valley and Santa Clara County, California. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Binksternet (talk) 18:47, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion criteria of this and two related articles 

message: Books by geologists describe Santa Clara Valley as a tectonic graben covered by an alluvial plain. The valley lies between two nearly parallel earthquake faults. These descriptions say that it stretches from Hollister to San Francisco, that the valley is 90 or 100 miles long. Sources that support this definition are:
*Annual Report of the State Mineralogist, 1890. This California government report says that the San Francisco Bay, Santa Clara and Gilroy are all part of the same geographic feature, which is a "great central valley" falling between two mountain ranges. See page 48.
*Bulletin of the Department of Geology of the University of California, published in 1896 by the editor Andrew C. Lawson. On pages 151–153, the source states that Santa Clara Valley is one continuous topographic feature from the "depression which contains the Bay of San Francisco" to Santa Clara to San Benito. It says this single feature is made up of sections known locally by three names: SF Bay, Santa Clara Valley, and San Benito Valley. The author proposes a new name for the larger valley: Santa Clara–San Benito Valley. He says that the larger Santa Clara Valley drainage basin is 150 miles long with the north end at the Golden Gate strait. 
*Ground Water in Santa Clara Valley, California, published in 1924 by the US Government, was written by geologist William Otterbein Clark. Clark says "Santa Clara Valley extends southeastward from San Francisco... Its north end is occupied by the southern part of San Francisco Bay. The drainage basin of Santa Clara Valley is about 140 miles long... The valley itself has a length of about 100 miles, of which 70 miles is south of San Francisco Bay... This report only covers that part of Santa Clara Valley lying south of latitude 37°40′, but there is some land north of this line on the east side of San Francisco Bay that may properly be considered a part of the valley." That last part refers to Milpitas, and the author is saying that his report will include Milpitas and every part of Santa Clara Valley south of 37°40′ which runs through modern-day Great America amusement park. He is choosing to focus on a smaller subset of the larger geographic feature.
*The Santa Clara Valley, California: A Study in Landscape Changes by Jan Otto Marius Broek, published in 1932. It says on page 11, the start of Chapter 2, that the valley is "nearly one hundred miles" long starting at Hollister in the south. 
*Subsidence in the Santa Clara Valley, California: A Progress Report by Joseph Fairfield Poland, published in 1962. Page C1 (the Introduction) says "The Santa Clara Valley is a large structural trough that extends from Hollister to San Francisco, Calif." The author narrows the focus for convenience: "Discussion in this report is limited to this central reach of the valley, which extends southeastward about 30 miles from Redwood City and Niles to Coyote (fig. 4)." The author focuses only on the parts of the valley experiencing subsidence from depletion of underground water. 
*Land Subsidence in the Santa Clara Valley, California, as of 1982, by Joseph Fairfield Poland and R. L. Ireland. They say "The Santa Clara Valley is a long, narrow structural trough that extends about 90 miles southeastward from San Francisco. San Francisco Bay occupies much of its northern one-third.... Land subsidence occurs in the central one-third of the valley in an area of intensive ground-water development. This report discusses only this densely populated central one-third of the valley..."
A great many geological studies of Santa Clara Valley have limited their scope to Santa Clara County because that's what their funding covers, and that's where huge subsidence problems emerged starting in the 1930s, caused by underground water pumped up for agricultural uses. The county (and the federal government) paid for decades of studies regarding the subsidence problem. The general practice of limiting scope to the county does not change the larger definition of the 90–100 mile long valley. Of course, a valley that long must include the bay side of San Mateo County and about 30 miles of the East Bay. Pinging  who blamed me at ANI for bringing an "outlier" definition here in 2021. My stance is that the expert geographer descriptions are absolutely defining, while the narrower cultural borders of Santa Clara Valley may be fashioned into an interesting side note for our readers. Binksternet (talk) 15:15, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Northern edge of Santa Clara Valley is San Francisco