Milpitas (Spanish for “little milpas”) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city’s origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José María Alviso in 1835. Milpitas incorporated in 1954 and has past become house to numerous tall tech companies, as allocation of Silicon Valley.

Milpitas was first inhabited by Tamien people, a subgroup of the Ohlone people who had resided in the San Francisco Bay Area for thousands of years. The Ohlone Indians lived a conventional life based on everyday hunting and gathering. Some of the Ohlone lived in various villages within what is now Milpitas, including sites underneath what are now the Calvary Assembly of God Church and Higuera Adobe Park. Archaeological evidence gathered from Ohlone graves at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in 1993 revealed a wealthy trade with supplementary tribes from Sacramento to Monterey.

During the Spanish expeditions of the late 18th century, several missions were founded in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the mission period, Milpitas served as a crossroads with Mission San José de Guadalupe in present-day Fremont and Mission Santa Clara de Asis in present-day Santa Clara. The estate of modern-day Milpitas was estranged between the 6,353-acre (25.71 km) Rancho Rincon de Los Esteros (Spanish for “corner of the wetlands”) granted to Ignacio Alviso; the 4,457.8-acre (18.040 km²) Rancho Milpitas (Spanish for “little corn fields”) granted to José María Alviso; and the 4,394.35-acre (17.7833 km) Rancho Los Tularcitos (Spanish for “little tule marshes”) granted to José Higuera. Jose Maria Alviso was the son of Francisco Xavier Alviso and Maria Bojorquez, both of whom arrived in San Francisco as children with the de Anza Expedition. José María Alviso is considered to be the founder of Milpitas. Due to Jose Maria Alviso’s descendants’ difficulty securing his claims to the Rancho Milpitas property, portions of his estate were either swindled from the Alviso intimates or were sold to American settlers to pay for genuine fees.

Both landowners had built prominent adobe homes on their properties. Today, both adobes yet exist and are the oldest structures in Milpitas. The seriously eroded walls of the Jose Higuera Adobe, now in Higuera Adobe Park, are encapsulated in a brick shell built c. 1970 by Marian Weller, a descendant of opportunist Joseph Weller.