L.A. Street Names – Los Angeles Street Names – their origins, their histories, their meanings

Welcome to L.A. Street Names, the origin stories of street names across Los Angeles County, from the shortest cul-de-sacs to the longest boulevards. Mysteries solved, myths debunked, scandals exposed, history revealed. This is an ongoing project with more than 1,900 streets – and growing. See FAQ for more information.

Featured Major Street

Sunset Boulevard

Los Angeles (Citywide), Beverly Hills, West Hollywood

Sunset Strip, West Hollywood
Image courtesy of Mark Tapio Kines

Los Angeles was first supposed to get a Sunset Boulevard in 1886, as promised by the planned town of “Sunset”. But that town never materialized, and its Sunset Blvd. eventually became the bit of Wilshire Blvd. that now runs through Westwood. So in 1887, H.H. Wilcox picked up the slack and began running ads stating, “Look out for Hollywood, at Cahuenga Pass, on Sunset Boulevard.” That was the Sunset Blvd. we know today. It started out small, its name referring to Hollywood’s view of the sun setting over the Pacific. (You didn’t need to climb high to see it in those rural days.) Sunset’s eastward expansion was completed in 1904 once it swallowed up streets with names like Bread, Short, Elysian, and Marchessault. Its westward expansion was another story: today’s Sunset Strip was known as Santa Monica Ave. during the town of Sherman‘s brief heyday; west of Benedict Canyon, the long and winding road to the coast was called Beverly Blvd. all the way up until 1934. Sixty years after that, Sunset’s eastern terminus was renamed in memory of Cesar Chavez.

Featured Offbeat Street

Bonnie Beach Place

City Terrace, Commerce, East L.A.

With no beach in sight, I believe this street honors Bonnie Lucille Beach (1896-1940), youngest daughter of real estate developer Albert H. Beach, the man behind Hollywood’s Beachwood Canyon. Beach bought and sold a lot of land in East L.A., and although his name wasn’t on the Stephenson Avenue tract on which Bonnie Beach Place was laid out in 1906, it’s highly likely he was involved. (Stephenson Avenue was the original name of Whittier Boulevard.) Beach frequently partnered with Frank R. Strong and George W. Dickinson, whose names were on this tract; moreover, in 1903 there was a different tract near USC called Bonnie Beach – and it was owned by Bonnie’s older sister Mabel (c. 1878-1971). Sales agents for that tract? Strong & Dickinson. Draw your own conclusions. Speaking of drawing, the Escondido-born Bonnie Beach was a trained artist with a troubled life. She wed San Francisco physician Russell C. Ryan in February 1918, only to sue him for divorce 18 months later, claiming that he slapped her, tickled her(!), and forced her to call him “Doctor” in public. Her husband’s long-winded counter-complaint insisted that she only married him because she thought he’d be killed in WWI and thus she’d inherit his property and pension. After settling the divorce in 1920, Bonnie Beach Ryan established a modest career as a painter but died at 43 from complications of alcoholic cirrhosis.