Franklin is too common a name to nail down a namesake for this canyon (and street). But I have a pretty good theory. An 1883 news article about a devastating fire in Coldwater Canyon is the earliest mention I found of Franklin Canyon. Beekeeper Charles Andrew Tullis (1858-1933) was mentioned as living here at that time… and his wife Lucinda (1859-1953) was born Lucinda Franklin. I found no other beekeepers with that surname, so I suspect Tullis named the canyon after her. A California native, Lucinda Franklin’s childhood was shattered in 1870 when her father Thomas, a man of “turbulent disposition”, was killed by her stepbrother in an El Monte gunfight. That 1883 fire was another major trauma, and by 1898 she and Charles had quit canyon life and settled in Sherman (today’s West Hollywood). A mother of six, Lucinda Franklin Tullis suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1940 and spent her remaining years in a nursing home. As for Franklin Canyon Drive, it opened on November 22nd, 1924, six decades before Franklin Canyon Park became official.
Find it on the map:
