Open ground near Moffett Field
This flat stretch of ground near Moffett Federal Airfield in Sunnyvale once lay within Rancho Posolmi, a Mexican land grant that existed from 1844 to 1876. No building stands on the exact spot today, though Hangar One, built in 1933 for the airship USS Macon, rises less than a mile away.
This ground once lay within Rancho Posolmi
You're standing on a stretch of flat land near Moffett Federal Airfield, in Sunnyvale, close to the Santa Clara County line with San Jose. There's no building marked on this exact spot, just open ground between the airfield and the streets of the South Bay.
The ground once lay inside Rancho Posolmi, a Mexican-era land grant that existed from 1844 until 1876, when it was broken up and absorbed into the growing patchwork of private lots around the bay. Nothing of the rancho remains to see.
A little under a mile away stands Hangar One, the giant airship hangar built in 1933 for the Navy's dirigible fleet, and close by Yahoo Inc. has run offices since 2006, part of the valley that grew up on this same stretch of flat land.
A Navy airfield grew up on this flat ground
Moffett Field itself grew up on this flat ground as a Navy air station, built for the airship USS Macon. The Navy later handed flying operations to NASA, which ran the airfield for decades of research flights. In 2014, Moffett Federal Airfield took its current name, folding the old Navy station into a joint NASA and federal arrangement that still manages the field today.
Open ground now sits amid airfield and office parks
Today the open ground around you sits between that working airfield and the office parks of Sunnyvale and Mountain View. Yahoo Inc. has kept a division here since 2006, one of many tech companies that filled in the land once held by ranchos and later by military housing, and the Lockheed Martin Transit Center sits about three-quarters of a mile off, a rail and bus stop built in 1999 to move the valley's workers in and out.
Close by, a cluster of names marks how the ground has been used and reused. South Shore Port, a small town-like settlement, sits about three-quarters of a mile away. The Regenerative Sciences Institute, a nonprofit founded in 1994, is about 0.9 miles off. None of it touches this exact patch of land, which stays open, flat, and quiet between the runways and the roads.
You can still see Hangar One's curved roof rising over the flat land toward the airfield.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.