Earliest recorded history stems from 1769, when Gaspar de Portola noted an Ohlone settlement and this remains an area of known Indian mounds. A plaque is erected at Middlefield Road and Webster Street to commemorate this area.
The township of Mayfield was formed in 1855, in what is now South Palo Alto. Known for its rowdy saloons, it rejected Leland Stanford’s requests for reform which led him to drive the formation of Palo Alto in 1895. With Stanford’s support, saloon days faded and Palo Alto grew to the size of Mayfield. On July 2, 1925, Palo Alto voters approved the annexation of Mayfield and the two communities were officially consolidated on July 6, 1925. This saga explains why Palo Alto has two downtown areas: one along University Avenue and one along California Avenue. The latter was the downtown of Mayfield, the former of Palo Alto prior to merging with Mayfield. The Mayfield News wrote its own obituary four days later:
“It is with a feeling of deep regret that we see on our streets today those who would sell, or give, our beautiful little city to an outside community. We have watched Mayfield grow from a small hamlet, when Palo Alto was nothing more than a hayfield, to her present size … and it is with a feeling of sorrow that we contemplate the fact that there are those who would sell or give the city away.”
An interesting part of Palo Alto is a designated historic district called "Professorville"; this area bounded by Lincoln, Kingsley, Waverley and Ramona was where Stanford University's first faculty members settled. There are a large number of well preserved residences dating from the 1890s here including 833 Kingsley, 345 Lincoln and 450 Kingsley. 1044 Bryant was the home of Russell Varian and , co-inventor of the Klystron tube. The Lee DeForest laboratory site, situated at 218 Channing, is a California Historical Landmark owing to DeForest's invention of the first vacuum tubeoscillator in 1911 at this location. While not open to the public, the garage that housed the launch of Hewlett Packard is located at 367 Addison Av. The house and garage were recently restored by Hewlett Packard.
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