Charlie Canyon most likely honors an early settler named Charlie Moore – but which one is unclear. First we have Charles Moore (c. 1825-?), a Prussian immigrant who came to California in the 1840s. I found little biographical information about him. He was married to a Mexican Californian woman named Refugia and had one child with her: Joseph Raymond Moore (1857-1949), who was nicknamed “Charlito” in boyhood and thus went by “Charlie” as an adult, making him our second potential namesake. After some years in the Ventura area, where little Charlie was born, the elder Moore was operating a stagecoach stop in San Francisquito Canyon by 1871. A Spanish language newspaper mentioned the “cañon de Charley Moore” in 1877 but indicated that it was near Tehachapi – Charles had a cattle ranch there, according to later reports. Our Charlie Canyon was first name-checked in an 1891 Los Angeles Herald article about local oil discoveries. An article the following year noted that Charles, a saloon keeper and owner of a mercantile block on Newhall’s Spruce Street, owned 160 acres here. He was still alive in Newhall in the 1900 census; I found no record of his death. As for Joseph a.k.a. “Charlie”, he would work for Standard Oil and the County Forestry Dept. He and his second wife Margaret (née Martinez, 1858-1948) tied the knot in 1888, raised several kids, and were pillars of Newhall society. This road was named by 1951.
Find it on the map:
