The 1975 obituary for one Donald E. Markley stated that Whites Canyon Road was named for his father-in-law Evan White. I have no cause to doubt that claim, even if I found no hard evidence to support it. Dr. Evan Stevenson White (1873-1947) was a Missouri-born physician who, after a decade in El Paso, came to Los Angeles in 1920 with his second wife Martha (1892-1960) and their kids Virginia (the future Mrs. Markley) and Evan Jr. By this point White had quit his medical practice and was focused on real estate. Again, facts are vague, but it appears that the Whites homesteaded 12.5 acres in this vicinity in 1927 for a country home they dubbed “Wagon Wheel Ranch”. (White would in fact buy and sell hundreds of acres around here.) The family more or less lived at the ranch throughout the 1930s – White, a progressive Democrat, was especially prominent here in 1934 while stumping for Upton Sinclair’s failed gubernatorial bid – but by 1942 White, now based in the San Fernando Valley, was trying to unload it. (Martha must have left him around this time, as she remarried in 1946.) Realtor Nicholas Rodes bought the property in 1949; it’s unknown if it was he who christened Whites Canyon Road, but it was named in 1961.
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