Photo by Cristiano Tomás-Creative Commons

South Santa Clara County is booming, having outgrown its agricultural roots in in recent decades to become a thriving bedroom community for Silicon Valley.

The numbers tell the story. Mean household income in Morgan Hill now exceeds $148,997 per year, and in Gilroy it exceeds $114,130 per year. Managerial and professional employees are now the largest segment of residents in both communities, and fewer than 4 percent of area residents now work in farming. Roughly two-thirds of area residents own their own homes.

Throughout it all, one thing has not changed. For more than 125 years, the region has been well-served by its newspapers: the Morgan Hill Times, which was founded in 1894, and the Gilroy Dispatch, which was founded in 1868.