First laid out in 1922 between Fair and Vineland on a tract owned by Irvine Willard Biggar (1865-1942), who had been selling real estate around Sun Valley (then called Roscoe) and Burbank for a decade. (Born in New York, he spent most of his pre-L.A. life around Kansas City.) The mortgagee was Jennie Ann Patton (née Richardson, 1869-1951). Arminta was a woman’s name in those days, albeit an uncommon one: I found only five Armintas in early 1920s city directories, with a few more probably unlisted. Certainly neither Biggar nor Patton had any in their families. But get this: Biggar’s parents Thomas and Margaret hailed from County Antrim, (Northern) Ireland – and “Arminta” is nearly an anagram of “Antrim”. Sure, there’s an extra “a” in there, but it seems too close to be coincidental. I thus posit that Biggar was paying tribute to his roots with a little wordplay. Dismiss this theory as crackpot if you must; unless a more plausible etymology bubbles up in my research, this is what I’m sticking with.
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