Alviso, San Jose Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

Alviso sits where the Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek reach the bay through Alviso Slough. It takes its name from Ignacio Alviso, who received the Rincón de los Esteros land grant in 1838, and History San Jose dates the town to the 1840s and its incorporation to 1852. In the mid-1800s it was the port of San Jose, with steamboats running to San Francisco; the 1864 railroad between San Francisco and San Jose bypassed it, and by the 1880s it was a stop on the Southern Pacific line toward Oakland.

Industry followed the water. History San Jose lists the Alviso Mills flour mill from 1853 until 1885 and the Bayside Canning Company, which opened in 1906 and was sold in 1936. The city's historic resources inventory still lists the constable's office and jail (about 1865), the old Union Warehouse and docks (about 1858), the railroad depot (about 1885), the Bayside Canning Company buildings, a hotel from about 1900 and the old city hall and firehouse on Taylor St (about 1933). About 32 acres of the old grid west of Gold St form the Alviso National Register District on the city's historic-area map, and a 6-acre Bayside Canning Company City Conservation Area sits inside it.

Alviso stayed a separate city for more than a century. History San Jose says voters rejected consolidation with San Jose in 1961 and 1962, then approved it 189 to 180 in 1968; the city's annexation records list the 1968 'Alviso Consolidation'. The same history lists Guadalupe River floods in 1862, 1895, 1911, 1955, 1958, 1963, 1969, 1982, 1986 and 1995. In April 2022 the Army Corps of Engineers and Valley Water broke ground on a levee of about four miles running north from Alviso Marina County Park and east to Artesian Slough, built to keep bay flooding out of Alviso and the regional wastewater facility, according to a local news report.