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Land

Most of Stanford is on an 8,180-acre (12.8 sq mi; 33.1 km) campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (30 km) northwest of San Jose. Stanford received $4.5 billion in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.

Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley.

The central campus includes a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012, Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it. Heavy rains in January 2023 refilled Lake Lagunita to up to 8 feet of depth. Two other reservoirs, Searsville Lake on San Francisquito Creek and Felt Lake, are on more remote sections of the founding grant.