Described below are the identified historians who have documented aspects of San José's history:

Clyde Arbuckle

In the last years of his life, Clyde Arbuckle wrote a detailed history of San José, culminating his life-long passion for learning and teaching about the city's past. Published by Smith & McKay Printing Co. in 1985, the City of San José had commissioned him to write a history of San José during planning for the Nation's Bicentennial, and retains the copyright.

Clyde's detailed knowledge of the city since its origins was vast and remarkable. He had served as the City's Official City Historian beginning in 1945, and served as the first Director of the San José History Museum.

Clyde Arbuckle's History of San Jose remains the primary reference document for those seeking to learn more about local history and is an essential reference document for cultural resource professionals. The City's Historic Context Statement relies heavily on Clyde's original research and historical narrative.

Clyde's History is available from the San José Public Library as a downloadable eBook.

Clyde's work built upon the research and writing of many before him, and he is an exemplar for those to follow for his attention to detail.

Hon. Paul Bernal, Official City Historian

In 1999, the year after Clyde's passing, the newly elected Mayor of San José, Ron Gonzales, appointed the Hon. Paul Bernal as Official City Historian. Judge Bernal, a descendant of the city's founders, has had a life-long passion for the history of San José, and has spent countless hours researching the early Spanish and Mexican eras of the city's beginnings.

Frederick Hall

San José's first recorded historian was Frederick Hall. A settler in the early years after the Gold Rush, he sought to bring to light the area that had become his home. His first-hand knowledge, as well as facts he learned from testimonials, resulted in annals that were intended to prevent information from the past from being buried. In doing so, he dug up from the almost hidden recesses of the Mexican archives of San José the events which make up the early history of the valley following the introduction of immigrants from Nueva España, now known as Mexico. Hall also documented the first two and a half decades of San José under American rule, and told the stories of the events of two decidedly different cultures clashing and merging to become one.

SUBSEQUENT HISTORIANS

Since Hall, over the next century more than six mostly biographical histories were prepared, usually to chronicle and promote local residents who often paid to have their family stories told. The exceptions are two books written in the 1930s; James & McMurry's 1935 History of San Jose California, and Winther's 1935 The Story of San Jose, 1777 to 1869.

In 1980, a new form of local history book appeared with Professor Edwin Beilhart and Donald Demers Jr.'s San Jose: California's First City. Published by national heritage media organizations and sometimes sponsored by local businesses, in 1996, Reflections of the Past - An anthology of San Jose was published under the editorship of Judith Henderson, and a number of similar books have appeared chronicling Silicon Valley and its technological companies.

During the twentieth century, notable journalists garnered followers, known as "history buffs" for their newspapers, the most prolific being Cora Older, who spent years researching town events and interviewing old residents on their first-hand knowledge, and then publishing those stories in a series called "When San Jose Was Young."

The post-World War II period saw an explosion of historical journalism and publication of local history books chronicling the city's past. Within this flood of information, key historians surfaced who documented specific themes (such as railroading) and religious institutions, such as Agnes Solari and Margaret Zaro's San Jose's St. Joseph's, or communities that may have been under-represented in earlier histories. Among those are:

• Gloria Hom, who wrote about Chinese-American history;
• Members of the Garden City Women's Club who told the stories of early and important persons in History of Black Americans of Santa Clara Valley;
• Timothy Lukes and Gary Okihiro who chronicled the Japanese legacy in the valley as well as Steven Misawa's oral histories;
• Joe Salameda who recorded the stories of Italian immigrants in the area;
• And more recently Maria Brand, who researched the early contributions of German immigrants.

Ethnic, WOMEN & LGBTQ+ Histories

In the late 1970s, after the destruction of a large underground portion of the Tamien village and cemetery that had existed in the downtown during construction activities associated with the Holiday Inn parking garage, the City of San José contracted with Dr. Joseph C. Winter of the San Jose State University Anthropology Department to prepare a limited edition ethnohistory to accompany the technical archaeology report associated with the excavations. Tamien: 6000 Years in an American City is the first comprehensive history of San José that addressed religious intolerance and racial bigotry that has been interwoven with the development of the city since the first contact of Euro-based cultures with the Tamien way of life. Winter carried his historical overview and thesis into the present.

Other local ethnic histories have been appearing in the recent past, especially having to do with newly arrived immigrants from Mexico, but comprehensive histories of those communities established in San José following World War II are far from done. The greater community also awaits historical narratives on the Vietnamese era of resettlement in the 1970s, and other new ethnic communities arriving in San José from South Eastern Asia, India, the Middle East, Central America, Africa, and the Soviet Union.