Although Pacific Electric Railway owner Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927) is the usual namesake of anything “Huntington” in L.A. County – see Huntington Drive – this street surely honors his uncle Collis Potter Huntington (1821-1900) as it was probably named by 1887. (September 1897 was the first definite mention in the press.) In any case, it was long before Henry left San Francisco for the Southland. In fact Collis was by far the more famous Huntington at this point: he was one of the “Big Four” who built the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads – the other three being Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. Huntington Street is just one of many San Fernando byways that honor prominent 19th century Californians: Celis, Coronel, Griffith, Hewitt, Hollister, Lazard, Kalisher, Kewen, Meyer, Mott, O’Melveny, Pico, Wolfskill, Woodworth, and Workman are the others. Collis Huntington never lived in Los Angeles, but in March 1897 he had just lost his bid to make Santa Monica the city’s shipping port (the winners were San Pedro and Wilmington), so his namesake street surely came about before then.
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