The Oneonta name came to South Pasadena courtesy of streetcar tycoon Henry E. Huntington, who was born and raised in Oneonta, NY. (The name is said to be Mohawk in origin; some have translated it as “place of open rocks”.) In 1903, Huntington subdivided a hundred acres due north of here as “Oneonta Park”. In 1936, nine years after Huntington’s death, other developers set up the Oneonta Knoll tract and carved out this byway, which they dubbed Poplar Street to conform with the neighborhood’s other tree-themed streets. Residents had it renamed Oneonta Knoll in 1941, arguing that Poplar was too easily confused with Alhambra’s Poplar Boulevard less than a mile south.
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