William Burnett was a Milpitas pioneer rancher who impressed all who knew him with his responsibility, honesty, courtesy, hard work, and not the least for his skilled horsemanship. Known all his life as “Billy,” Burnett was born in 1848 in Missouri. When he was 11 years old, he started out with his family—parents, two sisters, [...]
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Although we tend to think that there could only be one community bearing this distinctive name, it turns out that there were at least two other sites called Milpitas. One was a Rancho Milpitas formed when the lands of the Mission San Antonio de Padua, (in Monterey County, near today’s King City) were secularized and [...]
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French Court is a little cul-de-sac off of Dempsey Road near the Highway 680 interchange with Montague and Landess that you’ve probably never even seen unless you live in that area. However, it is named for a very early local pioneer who ran the first hotel in Milpitas. Alfred French arrived in the Santa Clara [...]
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Downing Road, which branches off of Calaveras Road in the hills to the east to Milpitas, isn’t really within Milpitas city limits, but it nonetheless commemorates a family and their ranch which was very important to Milpitas history. The William F. Downing family came from Nevada in 1881 and bought land east of the Evans [...]
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Kraig Bunnell’s theory of the naming of Milpitas. He also talks about the origins of other names in our city.
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Evans Road, which marks the eastern boundary of residential Milpitas in many places, is named for Josiah Evans, one of our early settlers, who owned a ranch that bordered the road. Evans came to Milpitas in 1853 from Ohio after a few years in the California gold fields, during which time he founded the Butte [...]
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Dixon Landing Road, and Dixon Road, its continuation east of Highway 880, were named for Matthew Dixon, who came west for the gold rush, and in 1861 bought 600 acres of land, on both sides of the Santa Clara/Alameda county line, for his farm. The area was then known as Harrisburg. He built his house [...]
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Officers: Harriet McGuire, President, 262-7979 Barbara Bowman, Vice President, 942-1492 Bob Kruse, Treasurer Margaret Kruse, Secretary Bill Hare, Historian Committee Chairs: Barbara Bowman, Membership, Museum Maintenance, and Refreshments Bob Kruse, Fire Truck Dennis Cuciz, Police Car Sherry Cullen, Newsletter Bill Hare, Historian
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The Milpitas Town Seal was the idea of member Betty McDermott’s husband John, who came up with the idea for a seal of the Minuteman from one of his son’s history books. He designed the seal and took it to Arnie’s Signs and had 4,000 decals made. Joe Brown, a local painter, painted the original [...]
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