Records indicate that Osage Avenue was named by city ordinance in December 1917, six months after Los Angeles annexed this area. (The surrounding neighborhood wouldn’t be developed for another thirty years.) It doesn’t appear to have any connection to Inglewood’s own Osage Avenue, located just two miles east, so what inspired the L.A. bureaucrats who christened this street? Oklahoma’s Osage tribe, who at the time were famous for their oil wealth? One of the Midwest’s many Osage-themed counties and towns? Or, as in Inglewood, the tree known as the Osage orange? Other streets named here at that time included Arizona, Collingwood, Kennebec, Ortega, and Toland; all seem to have been arbitrarily chosen, all have since been renamed. (Kennebec is now part of 83rd Street. I can’t tell what happened to the others.) This suggests that there’s no special reason behind Osage Avenue’s name.
Find it on the map:
