Fremont Basic Data

City of Fremont
—  City  —
Location of Fremont within Alameda County, California.
Coordinates: 37°32′54″N 121°59′19″W / 37.54833°N 121.98861°W / 37.54833; -121.98861
Country	United States
State	California
County	Alameda
Government
- Type	Council-Manager
- City Council	Mayor Bob Wasserman (D) Anu Natarajan Bob Wieckowski Bill Harrison Suzanne Lee Chan
- City Manager	Fred Diaz
- State Senate	Ellen Corbett (D)
- State Assembly	Alberto Torrico (D)
- U. S. Congress	Pete Stark (D)
Area
- Total	92 sq mi (225.6 km)
- Land	76.7 sq mi (198.6 km)
- Water	10.4 sq mi (27.0 km)
Elevation	0–437 ft (0–143 m)
Population (2009)
- Total	213,000 (102)
- Density	2,652.4/sq mi (1,024.1/km)
Time zone	PST (UTC-8)
- Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC-7)
ZIP code(s)	94536, 94537, 94538, 94539, 94555
Area code(s)	510
FIPS code	06-26000
GNIS feature ID	0277521
Website	http://www.ci.fremont.ca.us/ and http://fremont.gov/default.htm

Photos of Fremont and surrounding area

Fremont History

Mission Peak as seen from the Central Park/Lake Elizabeth area.

The recorded history of the Fremont area began on June 9, 1797, when Mission San José was founded by the Spaniard Father Fermin de Lasuen. The Mission was established at the site of the Ohlone village of Oroysom. On their second day in the area, the Mission party killed a grizzly bear in Niles Canyon. The first English-speaking visitor to Fremont was the renowned trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith in 1827. The Mission prospered, eventually reaching a population of 1,886 inhabitants in 1831. The influence of the missionaries declined after 1834, when the Mexican government enacted secularization.

José de Jesus Vallejo, brother of Mariano Vallejo, was the grantee of the Rancho Arroyo de la Alameda Mexican land grant. His family was influential in Fremont in the late colonial era, and owned and built a flour mill at the mouth of Niles Canyon. In 1846 they were visited by the town's namesake John C. Frémont, who mapped a trail through Mission Pass to provide access for American settlers into the southeastern San Francisco Bay Area. Fremont grew rapidly at the time of the Gold Rush. Agriculture dominated the economy with grapes, nursery plants and olives as leading crops. In 1868 the 6.8-magnitude Hayward earthquake on the Hayward Fault collapsed buildings throughout Fremont, ruining Mission San José and its outbuildings. Until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused its destruction, Fremont's Palmdale Winery was the largest in California. The ruins of the Palmdale Winery are still visible near the Five Corners in Irvington.

From 1912 to 1916 the Niles section of Fremont was the earliest home of California's motion picture industry. Charlie Chaplin filmed several movies in Fremont, most notably "The Tramp." Fremont was incorporated in 1956, when five towns in the area came together to form a city. Fremont became more industrialized in the 1950s and 1960s. The General Motors automotive assembly plant in Warm Springs was the town's largest employer, and Fremont was known for its drag strip. In the 1980s the GM plant became a joint venture automotive assembly plant of Toyota and General Motors called NUMMI. Toyota and NUMMI shut down its operations in early 2010. Part of the plant was acquired in June 2010 by Tesla Motors as its primary production plant. Tesla is expected to roll out its high end electric vehicles sometime in 2012. A boom in high-tech employment in the 1980s to the late 1990s, especially in the Warm Springs District, caused rapid development in the city.

The first Fremont post office opened in 1956.

City Information

Never Married	(25.2%)
Married	(61.1%)
Separated (Married)	(1.4%)
Widowed	(4.4%)
Divorced	(7.9%)
Races
White Non-Hispanic	(41.4%)
Chinese	(14.4%)
Hispanic	(13.5%)
Asian Indian	(10.2%)
Two or more races	(5.8%)
Filipino	(5.8%)
Other race	(5.5%)
Black	(3.1%)
Vietnamese	(2.0%)
Other Asian	(2.0%)
Ancestries
German	(9.3%)
Irish	(7.2%)
English	(6.6%)
Italian	(4.2%)
Portuguese	(3.2%)
United States	(2.4%)
Schooling
High School	(88.4%)
Bachelors	(43.2%)
Graduates	(16.7%)