Michigan and Pennsylvania avenues – you won’t find much of the latter anymore, most of it was consumed by Olympic Boulevard in 1935 – were named way back in 1876 on a tract, now buried under Santa Monica High School, owned by rail engineer Joseph Ury Crawford (1842-1924). He was a native of Philadelphia, so there’s the story behind Pennsylvania Avenue, but what about Michigan? Well, although Crawford’s wife Harriet (née Henriques, 1855-1930) was born in Connecticut, she grew up in Ann Arbor. Case closed. In March 1874, just a couple of months before he and Harriet were wed, Crawford was hired to build a railway that would run between the “Shoo-Fly Landing” at Santa Monica Bay and a Kern County silver mining town called Independence. Via Los Angeles, of course. Dubbed the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, it would be presided over by U.S. Senator John P. Jones (R-NV), a silver baron who was also about to establish a new seaside resort: Santa Monica. The railway never made it up to Independence but it did put Santa Monica on the map, as heretofore only long wagon journeys on bumpy dirt roads could bring Angelenos out to the beach. The Crawfords were surely optimistic about the fledgling township’s future when they bought this land as investment property; however, work and family obligations – they would have nine kids – soon took them away from California.
Find it on the map:
