How a Ford Factory in Milpitas Changed the Face of a Town

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For Karl Cortese, the Great Mall of Milpitas is much more than just a mall. He’s come here often over the years, to go shopping with his wife or spend time at the Dave and Buster’s with his grandkids. But each time he visits, he can’t help but remember the place as it used to be.

Back in Karl’s day, the building was home to a massive Ford factory. Officially known as the San José Assembly Plant, the factory opened its doors in 1955. Karl started working there in 1968 and spent 15 years on the assembly line. For him, the mall’s shipping center offers the best window into the building’s industrial past. “There was that old green color and white letters and … the floor was all concrete,” Karl said. If you peek inside these days, not much has changed.

Nowadays, the only other way a visitor might know this building used to manufacture Ford cars is a small — and easy-to-overlook — display case of Ford-era memorabilia. For the most part, mall goers seem unaware of the factory’s history and its importance to the surrounding area.

The Ford plant put Milpitas on the map, forever changing what had been a sleepy agricultural town into a thriving city. The factory’s opening also sparked historic social change: the creation of one of the first integrated neighborhoods in America.

Moving to Milpitas

Before Ford opened its Milpitas plant, the automaker had already been operating in Richmond for decades. During World War II, the so-called “Richmond Tank Depot” helped produce jeeps, tanks, and other military vehicles. After the war ended, the American economy began to boom and demand for American cars increased. The outdated Richmond factory struggled to meet demand. Ford needed to expand.

In 1950s California, Milpitas was a great option. The agricultural town offered expansive acreage at an affordable price. According to historian Herbert Ruffin II, Milpitas “was just a place that you drive through [and] you see nothing but cornfields.” Ruffin spent part of his childhood in Milpitas, a town so agriculturally rooted its name literally means “little cornfield.”

After staving off annexation from San José, Milpitas was officially incorporated in 1954. According to Herbert, “San José wanted Milpitas real bad, primarily because they wanted … the tax money that came from that [Ford] plant.”

When the Ford factory opened in 1955, just a year later, it called Milpitas home.

Working at the San José Assembly Plant

David McFeely grew up in Milpitas, with the Ford factory in the background. “On a clear summer night, when sound really carries, you could hear the switch engines moving all the freight cars in and out of the Ford plant,” McFeely said.

For a high school graduate on the job hunt, Ford was a great option. It offered some of the highest pay in the Santa Clara Valley. McFeely’s plan was to stay short-term and save up money to go to college. So, he joined the factory’s part-time replacement program. When he finally got the chance to peek behind the curtain, he was in awe.

“I mean for a technical mind, it was like being a kid in a candy store,” he said.

The Milpitas operation was responsible for making some iconic Ford models — the Mustang, F-series pickups, Pintos, and Falcons. The 1.4 million square-foot factory served as Ford’s West Coast production outpost. At its peak, the plant employed nearly 6,000 workers and operated at a rate of 55 cars and 22 trucks per hour.

“God knows how they were able to do this,” McFeely said. “But the logistical coordination was fascinating.”

The expansive factory was a network of assembly lines. There was the paint department, the trim department, the chassis department, the repair hole, just to name a few. Workers were assigned a station and task to repeat ad nauseam. Former Ford worker John Wilcoxson said that “[the work] could get boring at times, but … you kind of had to make your own fun.” He remembered causing a stir when he smuggled headphones into the factory to provide a soundtrack to the monotonous, repetitive work.

“It was just sort of some nice background noise, instead of the constant clash of metal and things going on around me,” Wilcoxson said.

Former workers remember a strong community around the plant. There was a company softball team where different departments competed against one another and during the holiday season, workers barbecued on the blacksmith’s forge.

Many workers lived in a nearby neighborhood called Sunnyhills, which Ford’s local union built to accommodate an influx of workers to Milpitas. There was even a Ford Union Hall in the development. But the most remarkable thing about the neighborhood was its diversity. In 1956, when it opened, Sunnyhills was one of the first planned integrated neighborhoods in America.

The Story of Sunnyhills

When Ford shut down its Richmond plant to relocate to Milpitas, many workers opted to continue at the new location. But Milpitas lacked housing, particularly for African American workers who were barred from buying or renting homes in the surrounding towns. Historian Herbert Ruffin II says many of these workers first tried commuting from Richmond by car.

“There [was] no BART, there [was] no Caltrain, there [was] none of that,” he said.

But it was a long commute, over 40 miles. Ford’s union leaders were determined to find a solution to this housing problem.

Leading the charge was an African American worker by the name of Ben Gross. Gross was born and raised in Arkansas, lived under Jim Crow laws, and picked cotton during the Great Depression. After leaving the army, he joined Ford and quickly became an active union member. In 1950, he was the first African American elected to the Local 560s bargaining committee.

“Gross believed that he worked on the same lines as everybody, African Americans, and that they should be afforded the same type of treatments,” Ruffin said.

In 1954, Gross was appointed to the union’s special housing subcommittee tasked with finding a plot of land to build an integrated housing development. The project met its fair share of setbacks along the way.

“At every point in time as this is being developed … [there were always] these barriers that would be thrown out there,” Ruffin said. “You can’t build this here because of sewage. You can’t do this because of this. You can’t do this because of that.”

Despite obstacles, Gross and local union members were able to find some old ranch land for a housing development. With funding and additional support from a handful of Quaker-affiliated organizations, they started to build. When it was completed, it was one of the first integrated neighborhoods in the country, and it helped diversify Milpitas’ population, which had previously been majority white.

“When it did open … it was a big deal … it was plastered all over newspapers,” Ruffin said.

Gross was eventually elected mayor of Milpitas. He was one of the first African Americans to hold that office in the state of California. Reflecting on his legacy, Gross was quoted in The Peninsula Times Tribune:

“A citizens’ group said they wanted to change the city’s name … I told them we should change its image instead. We sat down and developed a master plan that brought Milpitas from a small farm community to the thriving city it is today. It’s a city on the move.”

The Ford Factory Closes

Ford changed the face of Milpitas, but the golden age of American cars wouldn’t last forever.

“It was the late [19]70s, and all the different auto manufacturers, they were producing more cars than they were selling,” Wilcoxson remembered. The 1973 oil crisis spelled disaster for big American cars. “Everything kind of shut back the amount of cars people were buying.” And Japanese automakers started gaining market share with their smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

Ford eventually closed the Milpitas operation in 1983.

“They had a manager’s meeting that the plant was going to be closing, that they were completely shutting it down and moving production to the Midwest,” Wilcoxson recalled.

Those who stayed until the end helped to pack up the plant, stripping it of anything valuable.

“They were literally having a yard sale in the parking lot of tool benches, air guns,” Wilcoxson said.

Becoming the Great Mall of Milpitas

After the factory closed in 1983, Milpitas’ economy took a hit. Thousands of high-paying jobs were gone. Soon enough, however, the 1980s and ’90s Silicon Valley boom brought new opportunities to the area, but not in manufacturing. The factory itself sat vacant for nearly ten years before it would be transformed into the mall it is today.

In 1994, the Great Mall of Milpitas celebrated its grand opening.

The grand opening was an exciting event, tying up traffic on the nearby freeways and bringing shoppers out to marvel at the massive retail space. There was even an old Ford car on display, a nod to the building’s prior use.

Visit the Great Mall today, and it’s much harder to see remnants of the past. The high ceilings crisscrossed with industrial beams are one tell, and the shipping area’s green paint is yet another. But standing in the food court, it’s hard to imagine Mustangs rolling off an assembly line. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t close your eyes and try.

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Katrina Schwartz: Post World War II America was a time of economic opportunity and people wanted cars.

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Katrina Schwartz: Imagine the open road, cruising with the windows down, radio blaring. The epitome of freedom. That’s the image Ford was selling.

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Katrina Schwartz: At the start of the 1960s Ford had cornered nearly a third of the U.S. car market. Many of those vehicles were manufactured in the Midwest, but Ford automobiles were so popular the company had expanded manufacturing nationwide. Ford had outposts in Edgewater, New Jersey, Seattle, Washington, Dallas, Texas, just to name a few.

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Katrina Schwartz: Many of these factories have since closed but some of this history is still hidden in plain sight. You might have even stepped foot in an old Ford factory without knowing it. Take the Great Mall of Milpitas in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance. 

Bob Marsden: This is Bob Marsden, reporting from the Ford Motor Company assembly plant at Milpitas.

Katrina Schwartz: That’s right. The Great Mall of Milpitas used to be an enormous Ford factory.

Bob Marsden: This particular facility which employees 3,000 is the West Coast plant for Mustang and light truck assemblage.

Katrina Schwartz: The plant first opened seventy years ago, on May 17th, 1955. At the time, it was one of the largest automotive assembly plants on the West Coast. It represented thousands of good jobs and brought social change to what had been a small, agricultural community. But visit the mall today and there isn’t much left to mark this history. Bay Curious listener Brandon Choy only knows about it because he saw a plaque once that mentioned the old Ford factory.

Brandon Choy: I was just wondering what the story behind this former Ford plant is and how it eventually became the Great Mall?

Katrina Schwartz: This week on Bay Curious, we dive into the history of the Ford factory that put Milpitas on the map. We’ll hear from former Ford workers about life at the factory and then we’ll explore how the plant changed Milpitas itself, transforming a quiet agricultural town into a bustling city, a city with one of the first integrated neighborhoods in America. I’m Katrina Schwartz. Stay with us.

Katrina Schwartz: The Ford factory opened in Milpitas in 1955. To help us understand its history and how it became the Great Mall of Milpitas, we sent Bay Curious producer Gabriela Glueck to the Mall to meet up with someone who used to work there when it was a Ford plant.

Gabriela Glueck: Standing inside of the Great Mall today, it feels like any other American mall. But it’s got kind of an unusual shape. It’s a rough oval with a band of stores around the outside and a hidden open space in the middle where trucks can drive in shipments. It’s this secret inner area Karl Cortese is most excited to show me.

Karl Cortese: I just kind of know where everything is at.

Gabriela Glueck: Karl started working in this building back in 1968 when it was a Ford plant. He spent 15 years sweating on the assembly line. 

Karl Cortese: There wasn’t any air conditioning. So I remember that very well, because I used to take it all the way down to my underwear and then put my coveralls on and that’s all I had to wear, because it was so hot in here, so noisy and everything else. So I put up with it like I said for a long time, but it’s okay.

Gabriela Glueck: Walking through the Great Mall with Karl is a strange experience. Where I see a food court, he sees an assembly line.

Karl Cortese: I could tell you small parts here, upholstery was here, trim was over here, chassis was over here.

Gabriela Glueck: It’s like he can still hear the clanging metal, the chatter of workers, the sounds of nonstop progress.

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Gabriela Glueck: Talking with Karl got me wondering why Ford decided to build a factory in Milpitas at all. The answer is actually pretty simple. In the 1950s, Milpitas was largely agricultural land. The name Milpitas means “little cornfield” and after World War II, Ford was looking to expand. Ford had already been operating for decades in Richmond, California. During the war, the factory there manufactured tanks.

But post-war, the Richmond plant was just too small and outdated. So in 1955, Ford packed up its boxes and moved to Milpitas, quite the upgrade. The new factory was roughly three times as big. 1,414,000 square feet to be exact. That’s nearly 25 football fields dedicated to making as many cars as humanly possible. I spoke with a handful of men who worked at the Milpitas Ford Factory about their jobs.

Karl Cortese: I put the back hinges on for the three doors and things like that, and the station wagons.

Don Conley: So I was putting in the glass, the side glass, the quarter glass windshield and back glass, wherever they needed me.

Leo Cozzo: I worked in the Mustang, putting the pin stripes on and big emblems and louvers and stuff like that.

John Wilcoxson: I also worked in the repair hole at the end of the production line on cars that had missing parts, damaged parts, that sort of thing.

Gabriela Glueck: Each worker was assigned a station and a task, to repeat, repeat, repeat. One former worker told me it was a job that could turn young bodies into old ones real fast. They worked on all sorts of models, the F-series pickups, the Mustangs, the Falcons and the Pintos.

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Gabriela Glueck: But outside of the factory walls a problem was brewing: a housing problem. When Ford relocated to Milpitas, many Richmond workers came with it, including many of the plant’s African American employees. They needed a place to live.

Herbert Ruffin II: And they’re looking around, and they’re like, you know, okay, so what’s down there? And so how are we going to keep our jobs going back and forth? There is no BART, there is no CalTrain, there is none of that.

Gabriela Glueck: That’s Herbert Ruffin II. He’s an Associate Professor of African American studies at Syracuse University. He also spent part of his childhood in Milpitas. He says an African American worker named Ben Gross was a key player in solving this housing crisis.

Gross was born and raised in Arkansas, lived under Jim Crow laws, and picked cotton during the Great Depression. He joined the army, then joined Ford. He quickly became involved in union politics with the Local 560, a branch of the United Auto Workers Union.

Herbert Ruffin II: Gross believed that he worked on the same lines as everybody, African Americans, and that they should be afforded the same type of treatments.

Gabriela Glueck: Top of mind was housing for Black workers who were barred from buying or renting homes in many towns nearby. Gross was appointed to a special housing subcommittee, tasked with finding a plot of land to build an integrated community. But prior to Ford’s move, Milpitas had been almost entirely white. And not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of change.

Herbert Ruffin II: But at every point in time as this is being developed, there were always like these, these barriers that would be thrown out there. Well, you can’t build this here because of sewage. You can’t do this because of this. You can’t do this because of that, that, that, you know.

Gabriela Glueck: Despite obstacles, Gross and local union members were able to find some old ranch land for a housing development. It would become one of the first integrated neighborhoods in America. And with funding and additional support from a handful of Quaker affiliated organizations, they started to build.

Herbert Ruffin II: When it did open it, and it was a big deal, you know, it was plastered all over newspapers.

Gabriela Glueck: Called Sunnyhills, it opened in 1956, just a year after the factory. Soon families like John Wilcoxson’s started moving in.

John Wilcoxson: We had a Black family on one side of us, a Hispanic family on the other side, and we had a Polish family on the backside of our fence.

Gabriela Glueck: John is white and was young enough that he didn’t realize there was anything special about such a diverse community.

John Wilcoxson: And we knew all of them going in, and my father worked with them. All knew him by name, and it was just something that I grew up with, and I thought was normal everywhere.

Gabriela Glueck: The Union Hall was at the entrance to the neighborhood and pretty much everyone who lived there worked at Ford. John told me there was a real community feel to the place. From the Fourth of July parties to the potlucks.

Neighbors also came together on more somber occasions, like the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In its wake, the Sunnyhills United Methodist Church held a mourning event, with an open conversation about race.

John Wilcoxson: And it wasn’t until I was older and actually we were moving away that my parents told me that – and this is when the ‘65 riots were starting – that not everybody lived in a nice community like we had been in.

Gabriela Glueck: Ben Gross, the man responsible for getting Sunnyhills built, was eventually elected Mayor of Milpitas. He was one of the first African Americans to hold that office in the state of California. Reflecting on his legacy in Milpitas, Gross was quoted in The Peninsula Times Tribune saying that when:

Ben Gross: A citizens’ group said they wanted to change the city’s name, I told them we should change its image instead. We sat down and developed a master plan that brought Milpitas from a small farm community to the thriving city it is today. It’s a city on the move.

Gabriela Glueck: Ford was a big part of this “city on the move.” And many neighborhood kids like John, who grew up in Sunnyhills, ended up working at the factory.

John Wilcoxson: Going into Ford, it was not something I originally had planned on doing, but it was sort of a natural event once it kind of came about.

Gabriela Glueck: For many, working at the Ford plant was a pathway to the middle class, they could buy a home, have a family, and a guaranteed retirement. But all that was threatened when American automobile sales started slowing. John remembers it all too well.

John Wilcoxson: Well it was the late ’70s, and everybody, all the different auto manufacturers, they were producing more cars than they were selling.

Gabriela Glueck: It was a real rough patch for the American car industry.

John Wilcoxson: There was the oil crisis, everything kind of shut back the amount of cars people were buying.

Gabriela Glueck: He remembers seeing last year’s models lined up in the factory lot, Ford had made more than they could sell. It was evidence of a changing tide. In 1983, the factory closed its doors, thousands of well-paid jobs were gone. But this was the hey-day of Silicon Valley and tech companies were bringing a new kind of job to the area. The factory itself lay vacant for a while — nearly 10 years — until it would get the chance to fulfill its second destiny.

KGO-TV: A huge commercial venture that’s opened up hundreds of jobs in Milpitas tied up traffic on the Montague expressway today and sent thousands of people into a shopping frenzy.

Gabriela Glueck: In 1990s America, a massive indoor space like that could only really become one thing.

KGO-TV: And with that, the Great Mall opened its doors today, offering the promise of an economic boom.

Gabriela Glueck: Local TV station KGO was there to cover the mall’s 1994 opening.

KGO-TV: Built on the site of the old Ford Motor Company plant, this monster outlet mall is expected to generate 350 million dollars worth of annual sales.

Gabriela Glueck: It was a festive occasion, people milling around, exploring all the new stores. The footage is grainy, but you can still make out what looks like an old-school Ford car on the floor. A small history exhibit commemorating the factory. These days, that car and the exhibit are no more. But traces of the past still linger, if you know where to look.

Katrina Schwartz: That was Bay Curious producer Gabriela Glueck.

Brandon Choy: Bay Curious is produced in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.

Katrina Schwartz: Our show is made by: Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale, and me, Katrina Schwartz. With extra support from Alana Walker, Maha Sanad, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Holly Kernan, and everyone on team KQED. Thanks for listening. Have a great week!