Mills Estates, Burlingame Homes for sale, recent sales and a Property Nerd’s guide

The name is literal. This was part of the Mills estate, once part of Rancho Buri Buri, which stayed a country estate until the 1950s, when the land was sold to the Trousdale Development Corporation. Burlingame and Millbrae both wanted it, and after a long dispute the land was divided in 1954 along what is now Murchison Drive: the part from Mills Creek north to Murchison went to Burlingame, the rest to Millbrae. Homes went west of El Camino Real; the land east of it became commercial and light industrial (city history, compiled by the Burlingame Historical Society).

The hills were then built out in numbered sections. County records describe nearly every lot here as part of a recorded "Mills Estate" map, from No. 3 near El Camino Real up to No. 27 on Mills Canyon Court, and they date about 94 percent of the houses in this guide's outline to 1955 through 1966. The lower streets near Trousdale Drive and Martinez Drive came first, in the mid- to late 1950s; the highest streets under I-280 (Escalante Way, Hunt Drive, Atwater Drive, Alcazar Drive) were finished around 1964 and 1965. There has been very little teardown since: county records show only five houses built here after 2000.

Then came the Eichlers. A magazine feature on the neighborhood describes about 100 Eichler homes, many bought new in 1963 and 1964, with atriums and views toward San Francisco International Airport; an Eichler tract list also counts about 100 and dates them 1964-1965. At least one house is a custom design by architect Claude Oakland. The tract list names Frontera Way, Dolores Way, Capistrano Way and Mariposa Drive and Court, and county records date every house on Dolores Way and Mariposa Court, and all but one on Capistrano Way, to 1964.