When the Santa Monica townsite was laid out in 1875, its east-west avenues were given names of Western U.S. states and territories. From top to bottom: Montana, Idaho, Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Utah. One more state was added in 1902 when Railroad Avenue was renamed Colorado Avenue, but then three were lost: Oregon became part of Santa Monica Blvd. in 1912 and Nevada adopted Wilshire Blvd.‘s name in 1913. (Nevada being Santa Monica’s original central avenue might have been the work of town father John P. Jones, U.S. Senator from Nevada.) As for Utah Avenue, which had no Los Angeles boulevard to connect to, property owners successfully petitioned the City of Santa Monica to change it to Broadway in April 1924. Why? According to then-mayor John C. Steele, the Broadway name “would add materially to property values” along the street. If there was any anti-Utah sentiment, it was not recorded.
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