This 1923 street honors Judge Benjamin Franklin Bledsoe (1874-1938), friend and business associate of Harry Culver. (The two cofounded the Pacific Building and Loan Association that year.) Bledsoe was a San Bernardino boy who graduated from Stanford in 1896. Initially partnering with his attorney father, he was elected to the San Bernardino County Superior Court in 1901 (technically 1900; after a months-long recount fight, it was decreed that he won by seven votes). There he presided until 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson appointed him federal judge of the Southern District of California. Bledsoe stepped down in 1925 to unsuccessfully run for mayor of Los Angeles – he and his wife Katharine had recently moved to Club Drive in Cheviot Hills – then spent the rest of his life in private practice. A fervent patriot, Bledsoe publicly railed against Communism and was, unsurprisingly, good buddies with L.A.’s top capitalists, including Southern Pacific exec Paul Shoup (a pal since boyhood) and oil tycoon E.L. Doheny.
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