Named – indirectly – after Indiana politician Schuyler Colfax (1823-1885), Speaker of the House during Abraham Lincoln‘s presidency and later Ulysses S. Grant‘s VP. Colfax famously toured the Old West in 1865, seeking agricultural and mining opportunities to fund the country’s reconstruction after the Civil War. Denver’s Colfax Avenue (the longest commercial street in the country) and the Northern California city of Colfax were just two places named for him in the wake of that tour. Since this street wasn’t christened until 1917, long after Mr. Colfax’s day, civil engineers probably just looked to that Denver thoroughfare or that NorCal town for inspiration. In fact it was originally called Eucalyptus Avenue, but the City of Los Angeles had annexed the Valley in 1915 and L.A. already had a Eucalyptus Street, so this one had to go. Ironically, L.A.’s Eucalyptus Street was later renamed Baywood.
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