Places
Names
San Juan Bautista Hills
about two and a half or three miles above the present site of San José where we.. have the San Juan Bautista hills rising nearly in the center of the valley to the height of between 150 and 200 feet, about two miles in length, and a scant mile of breadth… [T]hey slope down to the Arroyo Tulares de las Canoas.
Map
detail of Pueblo Tract No. 1, c. 1876The Spanish named this area the San Juan Bautista Hills in the 1770s. Eventually they placed the cemetery for the St. Joseph parish at the base of the hill. They called the nearby creek Arroyo Tulares de las Canoas, meaning the “Tulares Creek of the Canoes”. Today it is called Canoas Creek, probably a reference to the tule reed canoes built by the Ohlone peoples in the San Francisco Bay Area. The name San Juan Bautista Hills continued into the American period. It appears on the 1876 map of San José published by Thompson and West, and the 1902 map done by J.G. McMillan.
Beach Hill Farm
In the late 19 th century, Tyler Beach owned the land at the top of the hill, adjacent to Oak Hill Cemetery. The area was at that time called Beach Hill Farm. But San Joséans did not firmly associate the name with the hill. Brainerd’s 1886 collection of maps, The Santa Clara Valley, used Spanish names in the text, but the American property owners’ names on his map.
Dairy Hill
In the early twentieth century, the place came to be called Dairy Hill, for the dairy run by the Azevedo and Bettencourt families.
Communications Hill
Communications equipment mounted on a neighboring hill in the mid-twentieth century caused the whole area to be named Communications Hill. The master development plan for Communications Hill, developed in the 1990s, included most of the San Juan Bautista Hills.
