Until the 1950s, Santa Clara County, California, was called Valley of the Heart's Delight. Its peach, prune plum, apricot, cherry, and walnut orchards dated to the 1870s. In the 1880s, commercial fruit and vegetable farms displaced a short-lived grain industry. By the turn of the century nearly 100,000 acres of orchards covered the valley floor, most of them located on farms ranging from ten to 100 acres. Libby, McNeil, and Libby, along with Del Monte and Sunsweet, established the area as a major canning center in the 1920s. Agriculture and related industries grew to employ over 90070 of the county's workers. San Jose, the regional center, prospered amid small farms and a network of main-street towns. ' Today the valley is known nationwide as Silicon Valley, home of the microelectronics industry. The transformation from orchards to industry occurred in less than two decades, but not without repercussions. The urban onslaught caused both local growers and county planners to raise the issue of agricultural land protection, and together they carried their cause to the state legislature. Equally important, the rapid transformation sparked a farsighted land-use planning effort. The 1940s irreversibly changed Santa Clara County. A combination of factors attracted industry to the valley after World War II: federally sponsored research in electronics; national defense imperatives of the Cold War; nearby urban markets; abundant inexpensive land available for large plant operations; and cities and developers willing to underwrite the cost of infrastructures. In 1940 the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics began constructing Ames Research Laboratory near Moffett Field. During the war, Stanford University joined a handful of elite universities throughout the country in developing sophisticated electronic equipment for defense purposes. Between 1944 and 1950, over 50 new industries entered the valley. Two of them presaged the microelectronics industry for which the valley is now known. In 1948, International Business Machines established a card printing plant in San Jose, and Russell and Sigurd Varian, inventors of the klystron tube, founded Varian Associates, manufacturers of microwave tubes and a variety of other electronic devices for use in the chemical, geophysical, and communications fields.2 In the 1940s, however, nearly everyone welcomed industrial growth and corporate expansion, believing it would strengthen the local economy and prevent undue hardship during the forecasted post-war depression. Few foresaw 5