David Rumsey Map Collection

25 Maps of Silicon Valley And Other Tech Hubs

We previously wrote about Early Mapping of Silicon Valley and the Internet. Since then we have added 25 maps of Silicon Valley and other tech hubs like Route 128 in Boston, Austin, Texas, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Also we have added some maps of Silicon Valley before it became a tech center. Here is a link to the entire group, including the earlier maps. These maps offer a unique view of the spatial arrangement of Tech firms. While the process of selling advertising spaces on the maps no doubt resulted in some firms being omitted and some included firms being overemphasized, still the result gives us a view in time that few other documents possess. As the maps continued to be published many evolved into calendar illustrations. We are grateful for the assistance of Curtis Bird in describing and assembling this group of maps.

The map below is an almost perfect starting point for looking at the 20th century evolution of the Silicon Valley region. Plumbers, Roofers, Glass repair, some bookstores, the surrounding ads for local businesses could be almost anywhere in the U.S. at the time. Aside from the "Moffett Field Air Base" and Stanford University, there is little that's unique, but those two locations were roots for the the development to come.

The map on the left, The Shell Oil map of San Jose in 1951 shows how rural the area surrounding the city was. The 1979 map on the right of Sunnyvale California is a regional map that includes good portions of the neighboring communities and grants a glimpse of life and commerce, with the cover title font giving some interesting foreshadowing. Done in a computer style script for "Sunnyvale" we now see surrounding advertisements for not just restaurants and real estate, but Microwave Tech, "Printed Circuit Boards" and "Capacitor Sales." The start of a huge inclusion of specialty businesses.

Shell Oil Company, San Jose and Vicinity, 1951

Landmark Maps, Sunnyvale California, 1979

The 1985 map below is filled with advertising for computer and other companies in Silicon Valley. A plane flying over the Valley notes "Launching The Bay Area Regional Technology Center Fall 1985. Apple appears in the lower left, below the Budweiser truck, and above Olivetti, in Saratoga. This is one of the rarest of the early views of Silicon Valley.

The left side map shows Silicon Valley occupying practically all the real estate from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. The expanse from the west to the east coast of the US is depicted in bands with the Pacific Ocean in the foreground, then I-280, then US 101, then the San Francisco Bay and in the far distance the Atlantic Ocean. In the foreground bands there are depicted many high tech companies, advertising and communication companies, business and distributors of digital contents, along with Stanford, the San Francisco Bay, Cal Berkeley. At left is Lake Tahoe and the Rockies, and at right Los Angeles. The right side map shows the area from Gloucester Mass to Norwood Mass, which is the belt highway the encircled the tech hub residing around Boston. The view notes Silicon Valley in the distance, as well as Silicon Gulch in Texas. In interviewing Kirby Scudder it becomes clear that this map and its Silicon Valley peer was made after the success of Maryanne Hoburg's 1982 map, and sought to meld the popular current of Saul Steinberg's whimsical maps with growing tech regions.

Kirby Scudder, Silicon Valley, 1986

Kirby Scudder, Route 128, 1984

Extrapolating from the same Hoburg 1982 map and with updated content, here Stephanie Russell reworks but retains the same composition.

The left 1991 map is a bit more primitive and cartoonish, being the earliest of Mikkelsen's work for the area, densely focused on the South Bay. Embossed lettering. The right map, also by Mikkelsen the next year, continues the embossed, high gloss depiction centered more and more deep into the South Bay, with an evolving cast of companies shown.

Mikkelsen and Associates, 1991

Mikkelsen and Associates, Silicon Valley, 1992

Colorful bird's-eye  1984 map of Massachusetts sponsored by International Data Corp. Annotated throughout. Includes numerous individual vignettes of buildings, landmarks, place names, streets, parks, bridges, and businesses, all clustered around the Tech hub along Route 128 outside of Boston. This is one of the earliest maps to depict the Route 128 region.

A very orthodox 1993 regional map centered around the identifying name of Silicon Valley, with coverage that anchors in San Jose and Santa Clara, reaching up to Fremont, and around to East Palo Alto, Atherton and surrounding area. A thorough street guide is on back, and treats it as a region, not just a smattering of small towns in the shadow of San Francisco.

On the left is an example of a map becoming synonymous with how a region thinks of itself. Here a t-shirt with a different set of points of interest, which include restaurants, hotels, and even the odd optometrist. It's evident that this is how culture is going to see itself in Silicon Valley, this version indebted to Hoburg's 1982 map, as so many of these maps are. The right map is a large back-of-shirt image for an Atmel shirt (chip and microprocessor fab) that includes a detailed sprawling view of the key companies around the south Bay. A moment in the greater electronics ecosystem, as a map.

Anonymous, Silicon Valley (T-Shirt), 1985

Amen International, Silicon Valley Classic Edition (T-Shirt), 1998

A Mousepad, showing how the map pervaded the sense of place and purpose, here the ranking of advertisers promoting their presence in the area is shown, and now we begin to see Software (Yahoo) first start to up in the midst of all the hardware companies (Apple, Seagate, IBM, HP)

On the left, Diane Gatto's design introduces another view of the valley, adding many sites in the southern East Bay. Another edition was made in 1995 for Cisco. On the right, a Greg Mack map of high gloss, with an expanded perspective, reaching up to the Golden Gate and over to the East Bay. Hints at the growth of what had been the secluded South Bay.

Gatto, Diane, Silicon Valley. Intel The Computer Inside., 1993

Greg Mack, Silicon Valley, 1997

Not Silicon Valley, but here Austin Texas metro gets into the game of fabrication and emulates the same map style to show their tech ecosystem. The 1997 map is one of the earliest to show the Austin Tech hub.

Yet another descendant of Saul Steinberg's tongue-in-cheek perspective maps, and this one for North Carolina, uniquely noting the growing tech region of the "Research Triangle". "The Triangle" is anchored in the three colleges of the area where the government tech investment began in the 1950's.

Left, a 2000 map probably patterned off of Greg Mack's map, here we see an overview, with tech companies rapidly reaching to San Francisco, Oakland, and all across South Bay. On the right, a 2005 Bird's-eye view of Silicon Valley and vicinity, including the San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Bridge, and Marin County. Shows cities and towns, major roads, topography, bodies of water and coastline. Relief illustrated with satellite photography. Includes compass rose, with north oriented toward upper right. Features Silicon Valley company names with website addresses.

Silicon Maps Inc. - City Design, Silicon Valley, 2000

Silicon Valley, Inc., Silicon Valley, 2005

A bigger and bigger region, now reaches out to Sacramento, down to Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, and beyond San Francisco. More of a realistic map, using satellite imagery, includes small logos and company names, spanning the decades from Intel and IBM, to Oracle, to Linked In and Facebook.

These two maps show the growth in recent years of the biomedical industries in both the extended San Francisco Bay Area (left), and on the east coast from Boston to Washington, D.C. (right)

Silicon Maps, Inc., Bioscience West, Global Leaders in Drug Discovery and Development. 2021

Silicon Maps, Inc., Bioscience East, Global Leaders in Drug Discovery and Development, 2021

The Tech world in 2021 - on the left in California, stretching from Sacramento south to Santa Cruz, with the satellite image background moving away from the pictorial views of the early 1980's almost 40 years ago. On the right, the same style applied to the greater Austin region in Texas, now known as Silicon Hills.

Silicon Maps, Inc., Silicon Valley, 2021

Silicon Maps, Inc., Silicon Hills, Leading Technology Innovators of Greater Austin, 2021