Earlybird Options

It is possible to leave Eastern or Midwest destinations early on Thursday and reach San José by mid-day. We have several Conference  sponsored options for Thursday, as well as unstructured sightseeing on your own.   First, there will be four mini-tours, described below, on Thursday afternoon that hit highlights of some of the Friday tours. To keep the Conference costs down, many of these mini-tours will utilize public transit. (The full scale Friday tours will use private buses and will go to places requiring overly long public transit journeys.) You will receive a VTA (the local public transit agency) day pass at registration if you have signed up for any of the tours.

Another option is "IA on VTA".  We have prepared notes on the industries and some of their histories along some of the VTA light rail lines. These are similar to the Capitol Corridor notes on the  Knight Chapter web site. Sign up for IA on VTA and you will receive a VTA day pass at registration and the notes for several different trips.  Pick one and  get a view of  Silicon Valley without incurring the expense and hassle of renting a car and parking.

Of course, there are lots of things to do and places to see independently of  the Conference. Just be back at The Sainte Claire by about 5:30 for shuttle bus service to the opening reception at History San José in Kelley Park.

Earlybird Tours - 1:00PM - 4:30PM, Thursday, May 29, 2008

Tour 1 - Greening of Silicon Valley Mini-Tour - Tour Guide

THIS TOUR IS NOW FULL. This tour is limited to 18 people due to the stop at the GreenTeam Material Recovery Facility, where recyclable material in San José trash is recovered in a state of the art, single stream recycling plant.  We will also stop at LEED certified green buildings.

Tour 2 – Rediscovering the Industrial Heritage of Santa Clara

Alas, for several reasons, this tour has been cancelled. Those who signed up for it will be contacted individually.

Tour 3 – Japantown and Heinlenville - Tour Guide

San José has one of only three remaining Japantown (“Nihonmachi”) areas in the US.  The area has deep industrial roots, though only traces remain, so we’ll need to use imagination to envisage the bustling activity at harvest time as the area was a center of the canning and food industries.  The Heinlenville block was a Chinatown site replacing older sites which had burned.  Due to the hostility towards Chinese at the time, Heinlenville was protected by walls.

Tour 4 – Cannery Life - Tour Guide

This tour covers a few highlights of the Friday Valley of Heart’s Delight tour.  It will take us to some of the canneries and related industrial sites near downtown San José.  It draws upon the research done by History San José in the development of web materials in collaboration with KB Homes, who is developing housing on several of the sites.

Tour 5 – DIY IA on VTA

For those who like to do things on their own, we have prepared notes about the industries and sites visible from some of the VTA light rail routes. These will take about an hour or so round trip.  Both routes end in pleasant small towns (Campbell and Mountain View [coming soon]) with many interesting shops and restaurants. These notes are "works in progress", check back to get the latest info.  Like the rest of the Conference, we'd encourage you to put your images up on Flickr, and for these, add the tag "iaonvta", so after the Conference, folks can share your insights and images.