Earlier than the late 1950s, before the construction of the
highway we
call Interstate
880, Main Street was known as the Oakland-San Jose Road and was
the
main route between
those cities. The main route west was the Alviso Road (now Serra
Street). A few hundred
feet north was the intersection of a dusty gravel road called
Calaveras
Road. Its
name came from the Calaveras Valley (meaning "place of skulls" for
the
many animal bones found there by the Spanish explorers) on the
other
side of the
hills to the east of Milpitas. The road ran along the north side
of
Los Coches Creek, the source of water for Alviso Adobe. This road
was the main
route into the
mountains and the many farms of the Calaveras Valley beyond. We
call
that old eastward
route Calaveras Road. today. It was around these two important
trade
route crossroads
that Milpitas grew up over the course of a century to provide
travelers
with the
services they needed.
When this building was constructed is uncertain but a Sanborn Fire
Insurance map
of downtown Milpitas dating from 1893 shows a "Lodge Hall" on this
site
and the timber construction under the stucco was typical of that
of the
late nineteenth
century. The first owner we have a record of was Joseph Pashote
(pronounced Pah-shoat).
The Pashotes were an early Portugese immigrant family descended
from
Joseph Pashote
(in the orginal Portugese it was spelled Peixotto). He came from
the
Azores Islands
in the 1880s to settle in the Warm Springs/Irvington area to the
north
of Milpitas
in the present city of Fremont.
In 1908, Pashote came to Milpitas. He bought a store and a
barbershop
for his sons,
one of whom, Johnny Edward Pashote, enlisted in the US Army in
WWI.
This young man
was one of four brave Milpitas boys who died in the Great War and
Pashote Street
is named after him.
His brother, Joaquim "Jack" Pashote, opened a meat market at this
location.
The name of the store, “Central Market”, can be read at the
entrance to
the building
imbedded in the threshhold cement. In the late 1930s, Mamie
Moretti
moved in for
a short time with the first beauty shop in Milpitas. After Mamie
moved
her business
south on Main Street, Magdalina Pashote Carlo (sister of Jack
Pashote)
and her daughter
Mary Carlo Valencia (pronounced Vuh-lench) ran a dressmaker's shop
there.
In the early 1940s, Alfred and Josephine Simas Carlo bought the
market
from Al's
uncle Jack Pashote and changed the business into a restaurant to
serve
the motorists
traveling from San Jose to Oakland along Main Street. Al did the
cooking and Josie
waited upon the customers.
In 1999, the historic restaurant was closed and sold by Jim Carlo,
son
of Al and
Josie. The new owners demolished it in 2000 to make room for new
development but the antique neon sign that hung over the entrance
for
half a century
now belongs to the Milpitas Historical Society. Today, the site is
still vacant pending development. For over fifty years, the
Kozy
Kitchen
served meals in the old roadhouse tradition of good food and lots
of
it.