Gilroy, California

Gilroy is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the United States, south of the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2020 census counted 59,520 residents. The settlement grew from the village of San Ysidro, which developed in the early nineteenth century on Rancho San Ysidro, land granted in 1809 to the Californio ranchero Ygnacio Ortega. After his death in 1833 his daughter Clara Ortega de Gilroy and her husband John Gilroy inherited the largest part of the rancho and began developing the settlement. John Gilroy was a Scotsman who arrived in California in 1814 and took the name Juan Bautista Gilroy, and the town carries his name; the state legislature incorporated it as the town of Gilroy on March 12, 1870. The city is known for its garlic crop and its garlic festival, which earned it the nickname Garlic Capital of the World, and for boutique wine produced by family vineyards at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains as part of the Santa Clara Valley wine region.