| Castro Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) in Alameda County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, it is the fifth most populous unincorporated area in California, and the twenty-third in the United States.
Castro Valley has some of the finest Eichler houses left in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Before the arrival of European settlers, the area was settled by the Chocheño (also Chochenyo and Chocenyo) subdivision of the Ohlone Native Americans.
With the arrival of Europeans, Castro Valley was part of the land granted to Mission San Jose in 1797. The area Castro Valley now occupies was part of the extensive colony of New Spain in state of Alta California.
Castro Valley is named after Don Guillermo Castro, who a soldier in the Mexican army and rancher. Castro Valley was part of the original 28,000 acre land grant given to Castro, called Rancho San Lorenzo. This land grant included Hayward, San Lorenzo, and Castro Valley, including Crow Canyon, Cull Canyon, and Palomares Canyon. Castro had a gambling habit and had to self off portions of his land to pay for gambling debts. The last of his holding was sold in a sherrif's sale in 1864 to Faxon Dean Atherton for $400,000.
Atherton, whom the city of Atherton is named after, in turn began selling of his portion in smaller parcels. Two gentlemen named Cull (the namesake of Cull Canyon) and Luce bought some 2400 acres and began running a steam-operated saw mill in Redwood Canyon. The Jensen brothers also bought land from Atherton in 1867.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Castro Valley was known for its chicken ranches. Later it developed into a bedroom community, where workers live and commute to their jobs in the surrounding communities.
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