It’s been claimed that Gable Drive, introduced in 1947 on Elwain Steinkamp’s Encino Heights tract, honors movie star Clark Gable (1901-1960). Although the Ohio-born actor was one of Encino’s most famous residents, he actually lived three miles away from this street, so either Steinkamp was just having fun or “Gable” refers to something or someone else entirely. At any rate, newlyweds Clark Gable and Carole Lombard came to Encino in 1939 and bought a 20 acre ranch, upon which they built their mansion “The House of Two Gables”. Lombard died in a plane crash less than three years later; Gable remarried and stayed at the ranch for the rest of his life. After his widow Kay Spreckels Gable sold off the property in 1972, it was subdivided into the Clark Gable Ranch Estates (later just Clark Gable Estates). The street on which “The House of Two Gables” sits was renamed Tara Drive, after the Gone with the Wind plantation.
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