Local questions in Palo Alto

The City of Palo Alto prohibits smoking in public places, including workplaces, bars, restaurants, stores, and theaters. The ban extends to all commercial areas, including publicly-owned sidewalks, alleys, parking areas, and service areas such as taxi and bus stops, in the city’s commercial zones, including downtown Palo Alto, California Avenue business district, Town and County Shopping Center, and Stanford Shopping Read more...

The city of Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County, California. Palo Alto is the sixth most populous city in the County of Santa Clara and is in supervisorial District 5. Read more...

The corporate headquarters of electric carmaker and renewable energy technology company Tesla are located on Deer Creek Road on the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, California. In addition to Tesla’s corporate offices, the site houses engineering and research staff and a powertrain manufacturing facility. Tesla relocated here in 2009 from its previous headquarters in San Carlos. The complex was Read more...

Foothills Park in Palo Alto is open to everyone, regardless of residency, following a policy change introduced by Palo Alto City Council on December 17th, 2020. The lifting of admission restrictions has resulted in increased visitor numbers and the park gate closes if capacity limits are reached. Dogs are only permitted in Foothills Park on weekdays and must be on Read more...

Yes, The Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden in Old Palo Alto is free and open to the public every day during daylight hours. The historic house and 2.5-acre garden, located on Waverley Street and Churchill Avenue were owned by Elizabeth Gamble, granddaughter of the co-founder of Procter & Gamble. On her death in 1981, aged ninety two, the property was bequeathed Read more...

Former child actress and US diplomat Shirley Temple Black was interred in the Adobe Creek Mausoleum at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto. She died on February 10th, 2014 aged 85 years old. Read more...

Debbi Fields opened her first cookie store as Mrs Fields’ Chocolate Chippery in Palo Alto on August 18th, 1977 in the Liddicoats Market food mall at 340 University Avenue, where the Apple store stands today. The popularity of the store’s freshly baked cookies grew, and in 1979 a second location was opened at Pier 39 in San Francisco. The business Read more...

A bronze statue of Nikola Tesla stands on Birch Avenue in Palo Alto at the intersection with Sheridan Avenue. The statue of the Serbian-American engineer and inventor was sculpted by Terry Guyer following a crowdfunding campaign and was unveiled December 7th, 2013. The statue serves as a free public wi-fi hotspot and also contains a time capsule to be opened Read more...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lives on Edgewood Drive in Palo Alto, California. Read more...

During the summer of 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook co-founders rented 819 La Jennifer Way in Palo Alto as their first base in Silicon Valley. A small team of coders worked here on development of the early site, and while there, Facebook raised its first external investment. This period was a central storyline in the movie The Social Network. Read more...

Jeremy Lin’s childhood home was on Louis Road in Palo Alto, California. Read more...

McLaren San Francisco is actually located in Palo Alto at El Camino Real and Arastradero Road, some 35 miles south of San Francisco. The dealership offers new and used car sales and service facilities. Read more...

Frenchman’s Tower on Old Page Mill Road in Palo Alto is a doorless red brick folly built in 1875 by Frenchman Paulin Caperon, also known as Peter Coutts. Now empty, with windows bricked-up after years of vandalism, the tower reportedly once housed his library on the first floor and a water tank on the second floor for irrigation. The land is now Read more...

James Franco’s childhood home is on Ramona Street in Palo Alto, California. Read more...

James Franco was born at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California on April 19, 1978. Read more...

Facebook’s first office in Palo Alto was at 471 Emerson Street in Downtown North. Then still called The Facebook, the company moved here in January 2005 from the house in Los Altos where the early Facebook team lived and worked. On the wall outside the front door is a sign in the style of Facebook’s familiar thumbs up symbol that Read more...

The wooden garage where, in 1938, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett worked on the first electronic products for what would become their Hewlett-Packard business, is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto. As it is in a residential neighborhood, the HP Garage is not open for public tours but it is possible to view and photograph the property and Read more...