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 1,500 streets – and growing. See FAQ for more information.

Featured Major Street

Las Tunas Drive

San Gabriel, Temple City
Tennis club at Las Tunas, 1884. Note Abbot Kinney front left, hugging racket

It’s not named for fish. Las tunas is Spanish for “the prickly pear cactuses” and refers to an adobe called Las Tunas, which is located near Mission San Gabriel and did indeed once have a thick hedge of prickly pear. Some say the adobe is the oldest surviving house in the county, built as early as the 1770s for the mission’s padres while the mission itself was under construction. The original tunas were part of the mission’s botanical garden, planted in the early 1800s by Father José María de Zalvidea (1780-1846). The house was purchased in 1880 by Irish-born civil engineer Gervaise Purcell (1844-1925), who might deserve credit for the “Las Tunas” name. He did subdivide the Las Tunas tract in 1886, which established the prickly name around town. Despite its historic status, the Las Tunas Adobe remains in private hands; hidden away on a cul-de-sac, it is rarely open to the public. As for Las Tunas Drive, a half-mile north of the house, it was named by 1912.

Featured Offbeat Street

Marilla Avenue

Avalon
1924 passport photo for Edwin J. and Etta Marilla Whitney

Etta Marilla Whitney (1862-1950) named the city of Avalon. Born Etta Marilla Ticknor in Flint, MI, in 1885 she married the New York-born, Michigan-raised Edwin John “E.J.” Whitney (1852-1931); E.J.’s sister happened to be Clara Shatto, who with her husband George bought Santa Catalina Island in 1887. The townsite they planned there was going to be called “Shatto” until Etta, a fan of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, in which King Arthur retires to the mythical island of Avalon, suggested that instead. The Whitneys actually lived in Avalon for years, from its rugged early days through the 1910s; they ran the Glenmore Hotel and E.J. served as Catalina’s first justice of the peace. They eventually relocated to Claremont, where their son Walter attended Pomona College. He would later become a professor of astronomy there.