 College Terrace as a community started in 1887 when Peter Spacher and Frederick Weisshaar, who had previously refused to sell the property to Leland Stanford who owned the land on three sides of the property, sold it to Alexander Gordon.He subdivided the land and laid out and named the streets and parks.Gordon had originally called the neighborhood "Palo Alto" but changed the name to "College Terrace" at the request of Leland Stanford (the name "Palo Alto" then became the name of another local, new community which had started as "University Park").