Cudahy Street doesn’t lie in Cudahy itself, but both street and city once shared the same landowner: meatpacking millionaire Michael Cudahy (1841-1910). The Cudahy family emigrated from Ireland in 1849 during the potato famine and settled in Milwaukee; there young Michael worked his way up in the meat industry, from humble packer to plant manager for the powerful Philip D. Armour. In 1873, Cudahy went to Chicago as Armour’s partner. In 1890, just three years after they had set up a plant in Omaha, Cudahy bought Armour out and formed the Cudahy Packing Company with his brothers. It didn’t take him long to eye an expansion into Los Angeles, so in 1893 Cudahy purchased 2,777 acres of the late Remi Nadeau‘s ranch south of the city, intending to use it for stockyards. (He also bought himself and his wife Catherine a winter mansion in Pasadena.) The stockyards never came to be, so in 1907 Cudahy subdivided part of his property as Cudahy Village, with streets named after his daughters (see Cecilia Street). That tract was incorporated as the City of Cudahy in 1960. As for Cudahy Street, it was named in 1912 by developers who had bought the remaining 2,000-ish acres of Michael Cudahy’s land from his heirs.
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