Santa Clara County located in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It is the primary site of Silicon Valley. The county seat is San Jose. Santa Clara County was formed in 1850 and named after Mission Santa Clara, "Clara" means "clear" or "bright.". Santa Clara County is the headquarters for such companies as Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard, Quest, Intel, Google, Yahoo. The county has a total area of 1,304 mi², 99% of it is land and 1% of it is water. As of 2000, there were 1,682,585 people, 565,863 households, and 395,538 families residing in the county.