East Palo Alto sits on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County, roughly halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. Bordered by Palo Alto to the west and Menlo Park to the north and south, it occupies a compact 2.5 square miles and is home to roughly 30,000 residents. The city's eastern edge reaches San Francisco Bay, where the Dumbarton Bridge carries State Route 84 across the water to Fremont and the East Bay. The area's history predates the city itself. The Ohlone people lived here for centuries before Spanish settlers organized the land as part of Rancho de las Pulgas. Through the early 1900s, the area was known as Ravenswood and North Palo Alto, and it remained largely unincorporated as neighboring cities annexed surrounding land from the late 1940s into the 1960s. East Palo Alto finally incorporated as a city in 1983, after spending decades as an unincorporated "island" within San Mateo County. Today East Palo Alto is a primarily residential community at the doorstep of Silicon Valley. Its location places residents minutes from the technology campuses and downtowns of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, while its own identity remains distinct: a historically significant, culturally diverse city that has long been home to African American, Latino, and Pacific Islander communities. The city maintains a network of parks and recreation facilities across its small footprint, and its streets hold a mix of established single-family homes and multi-family housing that traces the region's evolution from farmland to postwar suburb to modern Peninsula city. For homebuyers, it offers proximity to some of the region's most sought-after job centers within a smaller, more intimate municipal setting.