About theMilpitas Historical Society

The Milpitas Historical Society was founded in 1980 by 79 concerned citizens who feared the loss of our city's heritage. The first president of the society and the person most responsible for the society's creation was Elaine Levine. Mrs. Levine and her husband, Mort, were the founders of the Milpitas Post newspaper.

One of the first accomplishments of the Society was to persuade the city of Milpitas to create a Cultural Resources Preservation Board. This city commission was empowered by ordinance to review for approval or rejection all construction or alteration which involved cultural resources. In 1993, the City Council acted to dissolve the Cultural Resources Preservation Board but gave its duties of ordinance enforcement to the newly created Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Commission.

During the 1980s the Society conducted oral history interviews with persons who recalled the days before Milpitas became a city. These oral histories are kept by Bill Hare, Society Historian and Archives Director. An attempt to transcribe the tapes was made but the work of completing the task remains to be done. In 1986, the Society sponsored the publishing of Milpitas, The Century of Little Cornfields. This book, written by Patricia Loomis, told the story of the people who came to this area. It begins with the first land grant ranchos and ends in 1952, as plans were beginning to be made to move the Ford Motor Assembly Plant to Milpitas from Richmond, CA. In the late 1980s, the Society raised funds for the purpose of restoring and preserving some of the most precious of our historic buildings, including the Higuera and Alviso adobes.

Society Projects: The Society has been increasingly active in preservation since 1990. In 1992, plans for a new printing for the book, ...Little Cornfields, began.  This was completed in 2000.
• The first firetruck used by the Milpitas Volunteer Fire Department was acquired thanks to Ed Cavallini and is now completely restored thanks to Bob Keely and the inmates at Elmwood Correctional Facility. The Society worked closely with the Great Mall of the Bay Area to create a local history display seen by tens of thousands of visitors to the mall each year.
• The Society sponsored the first printing of a Bicycle Tour of Historical Places in Milpitas, written by Steve Munzel in 1994. Also, in 1994, the Society helped the City of Milpitas to celebrate its fortieth anniversary of incorporation by contributing selected photos and postcards from our archives for use in a commemorative community calendar.
• In 1995, the badly deteriorated roof of the Alviso adobe was covered by the Society working with the E Clampus Vitus Association.
• The creation of a walking tour brochure of old Main Street was begun in 1996 and represents a work in progress, although there is a "Cybertour" of Main Street link below that shows some of the remaining historical buildings standing as of December 1999.
• To improve in its mission to educate our citizens about Milpitas history, the Society established this internet homepage in 1997. Revision and additional photos are added each year or more frequently as I have time.
• No projects have been undertaken by the Society from 2000 although the Spring of 2005.
• The opportunity to purchase or lease the Van Der Bos house located at Ed Levin County Park in the hill above Milpitas was initiated in 2005 and remains a work in progress.
• There has been interest by some in the Society to turn the Alviso Adobe into the city's museum.  The Milpitas History Homepage believes that proposal to be unsound because the physical needs of adobe bricks and special humidity and temperature necessary to preserve the artifacts in a museum are not compatible.