Unlike most sprawling suburbs, Fremont was planned and designed to be the way it is.
In the 1950s, fearing that they would be annexed by the growing city of Hayward to the north, eight very small towns decided to unite to avoid annexation. Two towns (Alvarado and Decoto) closest to
Hayward quickly incorporated into Union City. The six remaining towns got together and
extensively planned how things would be. Space was allocated both for industry and homes.
Space for roads large enough to support the massive traffic flows was set aside. One of the
small towns (Newark) dropped out of the coalition because it was slated to become an industrial zone. The five remaining towns -- (Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs, from north to south - annexed all the surrounding land to form the City of Fremont.
The oldest of the small towns was Mission San José, named for a Spanish mission founded in 1797. When this Mission was founded it was named "La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarch San José" in honor of St. Joseph. It is sometimes incorrectly called the Mission San José de Guadalupe, after "El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe" founded (1777) 20 miles south near the Guadalupe River, which became the present day city of San Jose.
Fremont has been multicultural since its inception, and is home to dozens of immigrant communities and a broad range of ethnicities. Today's visitor is likely to hear half a dozen languages spoken even during a fleeting trip through the city. It is said that the largest population of Afghanis outside Afghanistan live in Fremont, and it also has a large and growing south Asian community as well.
Because of their entangled history and their present sprawl that makes them blend into one another, the three cities -- Fremont, Newark, and Union City -- are sometimes called the Tri-Cities.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Fremont
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Fremont - updated Apr 2024
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Fremont Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
