In 1913, the Henry Morris ranch in the Monrovia hills was purchased by Los Angeles real estate developer/speculator Henry Nelson Mabery (1875-1949; see Santa Monica’s Mabery Road for a bio), who promptly began subdividing the land as the Norumbega tract. In 1925, property owners petitioned the City to change East Avenue to Norumbega Drive, as the road was to lead to the long-planned, never-built Norumbega Town and Country Club. So who or what is a “Norumbega”? It was a mythical land of riches and beauty, coined by 16th century explorers and said to exist in present-day Maine or Massachusetts. Call it the “Shangri-La of New England”. Mabery himself hailed from Massachusetts, where the Norumbega name still pops up here and there, so I assume he knew of the legend and figured it was a fitting moniker for his paradisiacal tract.
Find it on the map:
