www.cityofpaloalto.org Palo Alto ( /ˌpæloʊˈæltoʊ/; Spanish: palo: "branch" and alto: "tall") is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is named after a redwood tree called El Palo Alto. The city includes portions of Stanford University, is headquarters to a number of Silicon Valley high-technology companies, including Hewlett-Packard, VMware, Tesla Motors, Ning, IDEO, and Palantir Technologies, and has served as an incubator to several other high-technology companies, such as Google, Facebook,Logitech, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, and PayPal. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 64,403 residents. Palo Alto was established by Leland Stanford when he established Stanford University, following the death of his son Leland Stanford Jr. on March 13, 1884.