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Originally Posted by iheartthed
It most definitely is there because of San Francisco. The purpose was to create a west coast Ivy League, and it was purposely built within proximity to what was at the time the largest city on the west coast.
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The major reason it's there because that's where Leland Stanford owned land. Why he owned land there is likely because it was close to San Francisco (his other residence), but I don't really know (maybe someone does...). Maybe if he didn't own land proximate to San Francisco he would have purchased land. Who knows (anyway it was his wife who started Stanford). He also had a residence in Sacramento though (since he was governor for a while).
Anyway that's all mostly irrelevant to why Stanford became so important to Silicon Valley. I suspect if Stanford were in the middle of nowhere rather than close to San Francisco, it may not have become as important an academic center. Also, I don't know to what extent many of us are wrongly attributing Silicon's Valley growth to just Stanford. It's a nice story that helps my CV but there are other drivers too (e.g. NASA Ames).