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2.65 milesJournalist and author David Halberstam died in a car crash at the intersection of Bayfront Expressway and Willow Road in Menlo Park, California, on 23 April 2007. He was a passenger in a car that turned left against a red light into the path of another car, and died at the scene as a result of injuries suffered in the impact.
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2.68 milesThe Facebook sign with the iconic thumbs up symbol is located outside the company’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park. On the reverse is the original sign of Sun Microsystems, who substantially vacated the site in 2010.
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2.7 milesThe Dish at Stanford University is a steerable radio telescope used for satellite calibrations, spacecraft command and telemetry, and radio astronomy measurements. Measuring approximately 150 feet (or 46 meters) in diameter, the steel and aluminum parabolic antenna was built in the early 1960s by the Stanford Research Institute with funding from the US Air Force to probe the scattering properties of Earth’s ionosphere. Located in the Stanford foothills south of the campus, the trails around The Dish are popular with hikers and joggers.
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2.97 milesSLAC stands for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the original name of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. Stanford University operates SLAC for the U.S. Department of Energy DOE Office of Science and it adopted its current name in 2008 when it shifted from a focus on particle physics to a broader research program including X-ray science, chemistry, materials sciences, and astrophysics.
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3.07 milesMcLaren 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.
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3.33 milesFrenchman’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 owned by Stanford University, and a nearby plaque reads: Built by Peter Coutts as part of irrigation system begun in 1875. Declared County and State “Point of Interest” – 1969
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3.47 milesThe 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 previously a manufacturing facility occupied by Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies.
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3.69 milesFormer 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.
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4.41 milesGoogle’s global headquarters are located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. Known as the Googleplex, Google first leased office space on the corporate campus in 2003 from Silicon Graphics, Inc. before purchasing the buildings in 2006.
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5.23 milesTolls are paid in the westbound direction on Dumbarton Bridge between Fremont and Menlo Park. This follows the convention for all the area’s state-owned bridges that traffic headed towards the San Francisco peninsula pays a toll.
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5.33 milesBuck’s restaurant is at Woodside Road and Cañada Road in Woodside, California, about a mile from Exit 25 of I-280 that runs between San Francisco and San Jose. The eccentric diner is a Silicon Valley mainstay with many VC deals reportedly sealed at its tables.
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6.38 milesGoogle does not own Moffett Field. The site, between Mountain View and Sunnyvale, is on federal property controlled by NASA. In 2014, Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures LLC entered into a 60-year lease on a 1,000 acre portion of the NASA Ames Research Center site that includes Moffett Federal Air Base, the three large aircraft hangars, and golf course. The corporation assumed responsibility for operating and maintaining the site and agreed to renovate and improve the site’s distinctive hangar buildings. Google is using the facilities to support its research and development and technology innovation activities.
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6.57 milesFoothills 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 a leash at all times. Previously, Foothills Park was open only to Palo Alto residents and city employees, an ordinance dating back the sale of the land to the City of Palo Alto in 1959 by Doctor Russel Lee, founder of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, with a condition that it be preserved as open space. When a proposal that the neighboring communities of Portola Valley and Los Altos Hills contribute towards the purchase was rejected, Palo Alto imposed a residents-only policy when the park was opened in 1965.
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7.52 milesAfter spending the summer of 2004 at a rented house in Palo Alto, the early Facebook team decamped to a new rented property on Westbrook Avenue in Los Altos, California. Dubbed Casa Facebook, the company was based here from September 2004 to January 2005, during the period that site reached 1 million users for the first time and was still known as Thefacebook. Mark Zuckerberg lived here during this time, along with Dustin Moskovitz, Sean Parker and other early Facebook employees. It was from here that Facebook moved into its first office in Palo Alto.
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8.02 milesFormer professional baseball player Barry Bonds’ childhood home is on Lyndhurst Avenue in San Carlos, California.
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10.64 milesTom Brady’s childhood home was on Portola Drive in San Mateo, California.
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10.81 milesThe San Francisco 49ers NHL football team got its name from the nickname ‘forty niners‘ given to the first wave of fortune seekers who flocked to Northern California in 1849 during the gold rush era. The team retained San Francisco in its name despite moving some 32 miles outside the city in 2014 to a new home stadium, the Levi’s Stadium, in Santa Clara, a suburb of San Jose. While headquartered and having training facilities in Santa Clara since 1988, the 49ers had previously always played in the city of San Francisco since its founding in 1946, first at Kezar Stadium, and later Candlestick Park.
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10.82 milesThe 2015 season Super Bowl 50 was played at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, California on February 7th, 2016 between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers. The Broncos won, defeating the Panthers 24–10, and Denver linebacker Von Miller was named Super Bowl MVP. As the 50th Super Bowl, the league named it Super Bowl 50 instead of Super Bowl L, breaking the tradition of numbering games with Roman numerals. Coldplay headlined the halftime show with special guest performers BeyoncĂ© and Bruno Mars.
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10.82 milesThe San Francisco 49ers NFL football team plays its home games at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. It has been the team’s home venue since 2014 having previously been based at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
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11.47 milesThe Intel Museum is located within Intel’s headquarters at 2200 Mission College Boulevard in Santa Clara, California, near the Montague Expressway exit off Highway 101. Admission is free and it is open weekdays and Saturdays except holidays.