Mountain View

Companies like Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, Inc. have put the city of Mountain View, California on everyone's map.

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Hearing the name conjures up a place at the top of a mountain with a splendid view of the surrounding countryside. In fact, this land at the shores of San Francisco Bay is amazingly flat, the nearest thing to a mountain being the Central Expressway overpass. The truth is that the city's name has been defined by that which it is not. It's almost as if Los Angeles had called itself "Not San Francisco," instead of wisely choosing the name of the local Spanish mission.

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Mountain View didn't have a mission. That landed in San José, and later in San Francisco. But it's strange that no one ever suggested calling the town "Castro", which provided the name of the main street. A name rooted in geography would have been good as well, Bayshore, for example. Or how about a name after the Indians who formerly lived in the area? By choosing an historic tree, famous neighbor Palo Alto got it right.

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It remains to reflect on the irony, perhaps tinged with sadness, that what in the muddled minds of the town's founders seemed most important, the view of the mountains, has been largely destroyed by their modern successors in their haste to build business high rises.
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