Carthay Circle’s streets are all named after key figures in California and/or Los Angeles history. The semi-official explanation for Moore Drive says it’s 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! I assume they were 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. (Andrés Pico led Mexican troops at the battle but surely didn’t kill Moore himself.) In 1847, American soldiers started building a garrison in DTLA that they named Fort Moore in honor of the slain officer. It was never completed, but it inspired Edward O.C. Ord to name Fort Street in 1849. You know it now as Broadway.
Find it on the map:
