Mountain View is at the center of the Silicon Valley and gets its name from the nearby Santa Cruz mountains. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 70,708.

Like most of the Silicon Valley, Mountain View was primarily agricultural through the 1960s.  It is one of the major cities of the valley, and the list of companies that call it home is impressive.  Google, Mozilla, AOL, all are headquartered here, along with some of Microsoft’s divisions and the NASA Ames Research Center.

The median income for a household in the city was $69,362, and the median income for a family was $80,379. Males had a median income of $64,585 versus $44,358 for females. The per capita income for the city was $39,693.

Mountain View’s downtown has a pedestrian-friendly area on Castro Street that is six blocks long. It’s also the first city in the United States which will be entirely covered by a free wireless Internet access network provided by Google.