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 2,200 streets – and growing. See FAQ for more information.

Featured Major Street

Lassen Street

Chatsworth, North Hills, Northridge

1858 woodcut, taken from the only known photo of Peter Lassen (now lost), flipped horizontally for accuracy

In January 1917, per city ordinance, the former Fillmore and Fernando avenues were combined into Lassen Street. The name was surely borrowed from Lassen County and/or Lassen Peak, both of which honor Peter Lassen (1800-1859), a blacksmith, rancher, and explorer. Born Peder Larsen in Denmark – “Lassen” was an English phoneticization of how he would have pronounced his surname – our subject was a lifelong bachelor who came to Northern California in 1840. Locals knew him as “Don Pedro”. Lassen was deeded the 22,206 acre Rancho Bosquejo near present-day Susanville (in Lassen County, naturally) in 1844, while California was still Mexican territory. Following some disastrous investments, Lassen sold the ranch and moved forty miles southeast to Honey Lake Valley. He was shot to death while prospecting for silver near Nevada’s Black Rock Desert – his killer was never found. Lassen County was formed in 1864 from parts of Plumas and Shasta counties. Lassen Peak was named by 1857, while “Don Pedro” still lived. With its headline-grabbing eruption in 1915, and Lassen Volcanic National Park being established in 1916, its name would have been fresh in L.A. bureaucrats’ minds when they christened this roadway.

Featured Offbeat Street

Atwood Boulevard

Santa Clarita

Marshall Wesley Atwood (1855-1937) was one of Newhall’s biggest landowners. Born in Illinois, Atwood lived in Iowa for many years with his wife Carrie and their three kids. There he became a real estate agent and got into the temperance movement. (For decades he would run, unsuccessfully, for various political offices as the Prohibitionist candidate.) The Atwoods came to SoCal around 1902. Although they would settle in Pasadena, Atwood – a friend of Newhall pioneer and fellow Prohibitionist Henry Clay Needham – invested heavily in Newhall in the 1910s, owning some 1,500 acres bounded by Wiley Canyon Road, Lyons Ave., Newhall Ave., and the railroad. He sold a chunk of his land in 1925 to C.F. Peter (see De Wolfe Road) and John H. Dunn Jr. (see Everett Drive), who then named their Atwood Addition tract – and this street – in his honor. The Atwoods’ daughters Flora and Amy each died in young adulthood; son Jesse Howell Atwood (1894-1972), a professor at Knox College in Illinois, spent his golden years in Newhall on old Atwood property.