Travel – Sunnyvale, CA

Sunnyvale (/ˈsʌniveɪl/) is a city in the Santa Clara Valley in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States.

Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by the San Francisco Bay to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield and NASA Ames Research Center to the northwest, Mountain View to the northwest, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. A small section of the border near Sunnyvale Baylands Park meets the city of San Jose (specifically the Alviso region) to the east and north.

Sunnyvale’s population was 155,805 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous city in the county (after San Jose) and the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area.

As one of the major cities that make up California’s high-tech area known as Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale is the birthplace of the video game industry, the former location of Atari‘s headquarters. Many technology companies are headquartered in Sunnyvale and many more operate there, including several aerospace/defense companies.

Sunnyvale was also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station, often called “the Blue Cube” because of the color and shape of its windowless main building. The facility, previously known as Sunnyvale Air Force Station, was named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka. It served as an artificial satellite control facility of the U.S. military until August 2010 and has since been decommissioned and demolished.

Sunnyvale is one of the few California municipalities to have a single unified Department of Public Safety, where all personnel are trained as firefighters, police officers, and EMTs so that they can respond to an emergency in any of those roles.