Cambrian Park

The name “Cambrian Park” used regularly since the 1950s by the then San Jose Mercury and San Jose News newspapers to refer to a portion of the Union school and Cambrian school areas, the latter school named in the 1870s by ranch hand David Lewis of the Jeremiah D. Casey Ranch for Cambria, the Latinized name for Wales (Welsh, Cymru), the country of Lewis’s birth. Due to the relative isolation of adjacent population centers within then rural Santa Clara County, place names and later municipalities, were often defined by their public school service boundaries.

 

We and Our Neighbors women’s club was established in the adjacent Union School District area in 1892, “…to promote social ties, intellectual and cultural pursuits, charitable deeds, and recreation for the farm families of the neighborhood.” Their clubhouse, built in 1910, is a San Jose Historic Landmark and appears in the National Register of Historic Places.

The commerce center for the Cambrian Park area has always been the Cambrian Park Plaza. Located at the crossroads of Camden and Union Avenues, the center was originally built in 1953. Today the center maintains the country charm and construction style, across over 170,000 square feet of stores. Through the years, the center has housed a mix of local shops and national brands. They also host a weekly Farmer’s Market May-September. The iconic colorful carousel atop the center sign is currently under evaluation for designation as a historical landmark. This is of particular interest in the community as the center was sold for the first time ever in 2015, to Texas-based Weingarten Realty.

Cambrian’s tree-line streets and great schools make it a very desirable community to live in. It consists of zip code 95124 and 95118.