About Fremont

Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs. The city is named after American explorer John Charles Frémont, "the Great Pathfinder."

Located in the southeast section of the San Francisco Bay Area in the East Bay region primarily, Fremont had a population at the 2010 census of 214,089. It is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest suburb in the metropolis. It is the closest East Bay city to Silicon Valley, and is thus sometimes associated with it.

The area consisting of Fremont, Newark (an enclave of Fremont), and Union City (formed from the communities of Alvarado and DeCoto), is now known as the Tri-City 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 the Fremont area 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.

The Fremont area grew rapidly at the time of the California Gold Rush. A town called Mission San Jose grew up around the old mission, with its own post office from 1850. 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 the Fremont area, ruining Mission San José and its outbuildings. Until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused its destruction, the Fremont area's Palmdale Winery was the largest in California. The ruins of the Palmdale Winery are still visible near the Five Corners in Irvington.

Fremont was incorporated under the leadership of Wally Pond in 1956, when five towns in the area, Irvington, Centerville, Mission San Jose, Niles and Warm Springs came together to form a city.