Named in 1887 by and for William Bingham Nicholson (1863-1901), a young surveyor who laid out the Ramona township that year with his brother-in-law Edward T. Wright. (There was also a Wright Ave. here, but it’s since become part of Alhambra Ave.) Nicholson was born in Pittsburgh, PA, the youngest of five kids and the only boy. He was just a toddler when his father died; his mother evidently remarried. While his formative years are unaccounted for, by 1884 he was living in Los Angeles and working for his brother-in-law. 1899 proved to be Nicholson’s fateful year: he married Mary S.C. Perry that January and was declared insane that August. Newspapers reported that he was under the delusion that he was incredibly rich – apparently that could get you committed back then – and he spent the rest of his short life in the state asylum at Patton, San Bernardino.
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