Originally Posted by JeremyS1973

Well that is all an incredibly ill-informed post.

Santa Clara is quite self supporting, has important cultural and historic sites like the Mission Santa Clara de Asis, founded in 1777 and the university around it, the oldest university in California by the way. Santa Clara University was founded in 1851, a full 17 years before the University of California. The Santa Clara Woman's Club Adobe, built in 1790, is one of the oldest, best preserved adobes in CA.

You also have the de Saisset Museum, the Triton Museum of Art and the weirdly fascinating Great Asylum for the Insane, later renamed Agnews State Mental Hospital and then the Agnews Developmental Center. It was built in 1885, was destroyed in the 1906 quake killing many patients and staff. It reopened in 1911 in a now historic Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival building.

Those are just a few of the distinctives of Santa Clara and many other cities can also claim their own unique character, history and sights.