Redwood Shores
neighborhood in Redwood City, California, United States
Redwood Shores is a waterfront community in Redwood City, California, along the western shore of San Francisco Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. Redwood Shores is the home of several major technology companies, including Oracle Corporation (which relocated its headquarters in 2020), Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Zuora, Qualys, Crystal Dynamics and Shutterfly.
History
Redwood Shores was built up from reclaimed land in the marshes of San Francisco Bay in the 1960s, much like its neighbor, Foster City, but the development almost never came to be. The owner of the land, the Leslie Salt Company, filled in soft ground known as "bay mud" formerly used for salt-evaporation ponds, but a significant controversy developed over fears of its susceptibility to serious earthquake damage because the area is between and close to the San Andreas Fault and Hayward Fault. The ensuing battle between various government agencies and business interests eventually made Leslie Salt lose interest in the project. As a result, Bank of America became the owner of the development in 1972.
It was the home of the Marine World/Africa U.S.A., California theme park from the 1960s to 1986, when the park moved to Vallejo, California (eventually becoming Six Flags Discovery Kingdom). The former location of Marine World has evolved into homes, townhomes, condominiums, apartments, parks, preserved land, and Silicon Valley business parks with headquarters including the former headquarters of Oracle Corporation. In December 2020, Oracle announced that it had relocated its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores to Austin, Texas.
Geography
Redwood Shores is located roughly halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, and is bordered by Belmont and San Carlos to the southwest.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Redwood Shores” is neighborhood in Redwood City, California, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Redwood, Shores and neighborhood, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “neighborhood in Redwood City, California, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1267489. VIAF identifies the subject as 130377606. The Library of Congress control number is n2002010285. Authority coordinates are 37.532, -122.248. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1972 and 1986.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Redwood Shores”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Redwood Shores primary sources, Redwood Shores archive and Redwood research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Redwood Shores” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.