The large palm in the middle of the parking lot northeast of the
intersection
of Main Street and Weller Lane stood near the Joseph Weller home. In
the latter half
of the nineteenth century, before Main Street took it's present path
under the Calaveras
Blvd. overpass, it followed the same route as the present Weller Lane.
Joseph Weller
had built his home and ranch buildings on the north side of this road
(then known
as Oakland-San Jose Road or Mission Road) were it turned in an S shape,
first westward
and then north again where Abel Street intersects Weller Lane.
Joseph Weller came to Milpitas in the 1850s. He had been a teacher in
New York and
retained his life-long love of learning after traveling west. He helped
to create
the first school district in Milpitas and was a founder of the
Republican Party in
the county. It was Joseph Weller who formally named our town Milpitas
when a Post
Office was built here in 1858. According to local legend, there was
strong sentiment
to call the new town Penitencia, the name some had been using for
years. Weller reasoned
that to untrained ears, the name closely sounded like 'penitentiary'
and should not
be used. So, he filled in the name 'Milpitas' on the postal form
because it was the
name of the rancho on which the settlement stood. In time, with the
passing of the
older generation, the new name stuck.
Following the fire of 1912 that destroyed the first school on Main
Street and while
the new Milpitas Grammar School was under construction, classes were
held in some
of the ranch buildings without charge to the school district. That new
grammar school
served for over fifty years, became the first city hall, then the city
library, Senior Center, and
is now planned to be part of a new library facility.
The Weller Palm is one of a handful of tangible reminders of our city's
past. However, it may not survive for long as a mixed use retail
and residential building is planned for the land on which is growing.