A Brief History of Fremont CA

Fremont's history and culture can be traced back to the establishment of the town of Mission San Jose, now a neighborhood of Fremont. Mission San Jose was the first European outpost in what is now Alameda County and the fourteenth of twenty-one historic Franciscan Missions in California. Built in 1797, the Mission was located strategically on the routes that connected Los Angeles with San Francisco and the Mission Pass to the gold fields. Nestled at the base of the Fremont foothills, the mission thrived due to fertile land, abundant water and an excellent location, and served as one of the first points of contact between early European settlers and the indigenous Ohlone Indians.

Fremont was named in honor of Colonel John C. Fremont, the soldier and explorer who had so loved Mission San Jose he tried to purchase it in the 1840's.

Now one of Fremont's neighborhoods, though it used to be a separate town, Niles was home to Essenay Studios, one of the first west coast motion picture companies. Some of the most famous movies of Charlie Chaplin and Bronco Billy Anderson were filmed in Niles, as well as many other silent films of that time: The Niles Essenay Film Museum offers, besides artifacts of the town's early years, screenings of early-twentieth-century silent films such as these.