You might think of movie monsters, but this street actually borrows the original name of Santa Monica Airport: Clover Field. Well, indirectly borrows. Opening in 1923 as a home for the U.S. Army Air Service (today’s Air Force) and Douglas Aircraft, Clover Field was named in memory of Lieutenant Greayer “Grubby” Clover (1897-1918), a Los Angeles boy who served in World War I as an ambulance driver, then decided to become a pilot. He died in France during a practice flight. Why Clover, of all WWI aviators? It probably had to do with his father Samuel Travers Clover being a well-known newsman. (He ran the Los Angeles Saturday Night, sort of the alt weekly of its day.) As for Cloverfield Blvd., it never led to Clover Field, but it did lead to the Cloverfield Golf Course, which opened up west of the airfield in the late 1920s. By that time, Clover Field had been rechristened Santa Monica Airport as a point of civic pride.
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