History Park at Kelley Park

History Park at Kelley Park is an outdoor museum spread across sixteen acres of San Jose park land, holding thirty-two historic structures, most of them genuine buildings moved from their original locations in the city and reassembled here. The concept took hold in the mid nineteen sixties, when preservation advocates pushed for a place to save San Jose's built past before it disappeared under postwar development. The city designated the Kelley Park acreage in nineteen sixty-five, and the park officially opened in nineteen seventy-one.

Early planners envisioned a historical reconstruction of a small town. Over decades it grew more complex, eventually adding the Chinese American Historical Museum, the Portuguese Historical Museum, and the Viet Museum. The park has become a portrait of the layered communities that made the city, not only the Anglo Victorian story but all the others alongside it.