Eagle Rock has three streets named after small towns in southwest Iowa: Avoca, Neola, and Wiota. They were christened in 1906 by William Raymond Myers (1866-1924), who was born in Cooperstown, NY (where his father worked at Hartwick Seminary) but came of age in Anita, IA – less than an hour’s drive from Avoca, Neola, and Wiota. After graduating from Iowa State, Myers moved back to Anita and in 1890 he tied the knot with Harriet Goodhue Williams (1867-1950). The couple and their daughters Neva and Helen relocated to Los Angeles five years later for Myers’s health. Here he got into real estate and partnered with the Swiss-born Emil C. Kulli on several Eagle Rock tracts. After her husband’s death, Harriet Goodhue Williams Myers presided over his company as well as the California Audubon Society, where she published several books on birds. P.S. While there was never an Anita Street in this neighborhood, William Myers did lay out two additional Iowa-themed byways: Marne (now Glacier Drive) and Exira (now Kipling Avenue).
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