The erstwhile Clark Avenue was changed to Estrada Street in 1897. It’s doubtful that anyone named Estrada was being honored: estrada is Spanish for “road”. This was one of over 300 streets renamed on February 26th, 1897 by city ordinance in an attempt to rid L.A. of duplicate and/or superfluous street names. The renaming commission, whose members included future mayor Fred Eaton, City Directory publisher Dana Burks, streetcar maven Charles Forman, and Southwest history expert Charles Fletcher Lummis, frequently sought to replace generic English names with colorful Spanish ones. Not everyone was happy about that, including then-mayor Meredith Snyder, but many of the nombres nuevos went through, among them Alcazar, Berendo, Cimarron, Guirado, Honduras, Lanfranco, Miramar, Plata, Velasco, and Zamora.
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