Carthay Circle’s streets are all named after people from early California history. The semi-official explanation for Moore Drive said it was for a Benjamin Moore who was born in Alabama in 1824, served in the first CA legislature, was uncle to Carthay Center developer J. Harvey McCarthy, and was killed in Stockton by Andrés Pico in 1866. Whoever wrote that was pulling their “facts” out of thin air – absolutely none of it is true! They must have been thinking of Captain Benjamin Davies Moore, a U.S. soldier who was born in Kentucky in 1810 and died in 1846 at the Battle of San Pasqual, near present-day Escondido, during the Mexican–American War. It is said that Moore bravely if foolishly rode out alone ahead of his troops and nearly reached Pico with his saber but was dispatched by Pico’s men. Postwar, in 1847, American soldiers built a hilltop garrison in DTLA that they christened Fort Moore in honor of the slain officer. It was abandoned after a couple of years but was still there when Edward O.C. Ord named Fort Street in 1849. You know that street now as Broadway.
Find it on the map:
