Striking a shovel into the heart of Silicon Valley, the San Francisco 49ers rolled out an entire football field Thursday — not to mention grandstands, vendors with Cracker Jack, cheerleaders and a giant inflatable football helmet.

The storied NFL franchise kicked off its move to Santa Clara with a gold-and-crimson-filled groundbreaking for the team’s new $1.2 billion stadium that looked more like a Super Bowl halftime show than a traditional hardhat-and-shovel photo op.

“Welcome to the site of your new home on Sundays,” 49ers CEO Jed York told a grandstand full of supporters — many in gold-rush style helmets — while standing before a backdrop that showed off the 68,500-seat coliseum-style stadium.

Ushering in a new era, the 49ers celebrated with all the pageantry of an event six years in the making, as supporters who have been sweating out the project’s fate were finally able to exhale. The team even announced the stadium’s first corporate sponsor, San Jose-based Brocade — although the lucrative stadium naming rights deal is still up for grabs.

York noted the 49ers’ new home would be the first football-exclusive stadium built in California in 50 years. In an emotional moment, the NFL’s youngest CEO briefly choked up in a gesture to his parents, John York and Denise DeBartolo York.

Red and gold confetti rained down as the York family and city leaders dug shovels into the 49ers logo on the ceremonial field — precisely at the spot of the new stadium’s 50-yard line.

Coach Jim Harbaugh, tight end Vernon Davis, quarterback Alex Smith and linebacker Patrick Willis also joined city leaders to toast their new home next to the Great America amusement park, with a plan to be back in 2014 for the first game. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell congratulated the team and city via video.

“This stadium is going to be top notch,” offensive lineman Joe Staley said.

The 49ers went out of their way to make sure Thursday’s ceremony had a hometown feel, complete with appearances by Santa Clara’s mayor, local color guard, Wilcox High School cheerleaders and Miss Santa Clara.

“We’re not just doing this for ourselves,” Davis said. “We’re doing it for the community and the fans.”

But sounding part-coach-part politician, Harbaugh said the 49ers were “the home team of the city of San Francisco, the city of Santa Clara, the Peninsula, the Bay Area and Northern California.” San Francisco cable cars shuttled the more than 1,000 supporters from the parking area to the groundbreaking.

Thursday was a huge milestone for Jed York, 31, who inherited the job of getting the stadium built and spent months courting Santa Clara residents, even telling his girlfriend, Danielle, now his wife, that he couldn’t go out on dates because he was busy visiting living rooms to win votes for the crucial 2010 ballot measure.

“There has been this question — is it going to happen, is it not going to happen?” York said before his speech. “I don’t think there’s any question now.”

New ‘entertainment zone’

Thursday’s groundbreaking marked a transition from one question — “Will it ever get built?” — to several others, including “Will the stadium put Santa Clara on the map?”

Without a downtown, Santa Clara is marketing the stadium area as its main “entertainment zone,” hoping the field not only transforms the area during the season’s eight game days but year-round, when it will host special events.

City officials hope the stadium will spark more activity in the area like new restaurants and shops. Great America, which was looking to sell before the stadium became a done deal, signed a long-term lease extension and is building a new roller-coaster. Across the street Joe Montana is the front-man for a planned luxury hotel, restaurant and bar. Separately, officials are reviving talks with a developer interested in building bars, restaurants and dancing spots near the stadium. The Hilton Hotel is considering an expansion. Pro shops and memorabilia stores are expected to pop up to join a new 49ers hall of fame and museum.

Within a block already are the 300,000-square-foot Convention Center, an 18-hole golf course, 2,800 hotel rooms, a massive soccer park, the 49ers training facility, some restaurants and creek-side trails popular with the local tech workers.

“Frankly one of the things we’ve been missing is a real draw to people,” said Steve Van Dorn, CEO of the city’s chamber of commerce and visitor’s bureau. “We really have been waiting for something like this.”

Getting there could be easy by Bay Area standards, as the district is sandwiched between highways 101 and 237, with a 1,820-space parking garage being built across from the stadium to join a VTA light rail station, and an ACE and Amtrak train station. And transit officials are in early talks to bring Caltrain, which currently shoots off to another part of the city, onto the ACE tracks and intend to run buses to shuttle visitors from the forthcoming BART extension to Milpitas.And here’s something the big cities can’t compete with: Free parking during non-game days.

“It’s an exciting thing to watch the ripples in the pond and the waves upon the shore that are caused by a project like this,” Mayor Jamie Matthews said.

Long time coming

City officials and the visitor’s bureau have been trying for decades to create an entertainment area to bring tax dollars and a sense of identity to the city. The closest they came was in the 1990s when a developer planned a Universal Studios-type project next to Great America, though it never came to fruition. They also courted the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants for new ballparks, to no avail. But the city thinks it’s finally reeled in its superstar.

“No one will ask in the future, where’s Silicon Valley?” Matthews said at the ceremony. “Because it’s here.”

Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705 and follow him at twitter.com/rosenberg17.