Although several San Gabriel Valley streets take their name from Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel about a Native American couple fighting to live freely in Southern California (see Ramona Boulevard for some background), some La Verne developer clearly read the actual book. For while the city’s own Ramona Avenue was named by 1928, in honor of the novel’s titular heroine, Alessandro and Majella avenues were added in 1962 and are deeper dives: Alessandro Assis was Ramona’s lover, an honest and proud Luiseño tribesman originally from Temecula, and Majella was Alessandro’s nickname for his beloved; Jackson’s book claimed that majel was Luiseño for “wood dove”, but Ramona didn’t quite take to that sobriquet and so she altered it to “Majella”.
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