Millbrae or Millbrea: Caltrans must be from Southern California

The San Francisco suburb is called Millbrae, not Millbrea. It’s not like the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

Yet twice in two years, Caltrans has misspelled the town’s name on a major highway sign.

The first instance was in May or June 2007, when Caltrans was adding exit numbers to Interstate 280. They replaced the Millbrae Ave. exit sign with one that said Millbrea Ave. We saw that sign the day it went up. It was corrected a few weeks later.

Now the same error has appeared on U.S. 101, the other major highway on the Peninsula, with its Millbrae Ave. exit sign. Yup, it’s become Millbrea Ave. too.

The story about it in the S.F. Chronicle (source of the photo) gives a little history of the name:

For the record, Millbrae is named after Darius Ogden Mills, the wealthy Scottish American who once owned the land where the city is located. According to the Chamber of Commerce, Millbrae is a contraction of Mills’ name and the Scottish word “brae,” which means rolling hills. “Brea,” on the other hand, is Spanish for tar. Transposing two letters changes the word completely.