Originally an agricultural town with many summer cottages and apricot orchards, Los Altos is now an affluent commuter town in Silicon Valley.  In 2018, data from the American Community Survey revealed that Los Altos was the fifth wealthiest city in the United States. Los Altos is located in northern Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area and the population was 30,743 according to the 2017 census.  Los Altos is a residential community served by seven small retail districts. The seven square mile city was developed with small businesses, schools, libraries and churches with tree-lined streets and a small village characteristics. The history of modern Los Altos dates back to 1906, when Paul Shoup, a Southern Pacific Railroad executive, formed the Altos Land Co. with friends.  The company planned a new town to serve the new Southern Pacific Railroad cutoff between Mayfield and Los Gatos and named it "Los Altos" (Spanish for "the heights") because the land was the highest on that cutoff. This community's population exploded after World War II, and on December 1, 1952, an expanded Los Altos became the eleventh city in Santa Clara County.