It’s a delightful origin story, and it might even be true – although I wouldn’t stake my life on it. According to lore, Edward O.C. Ord, the Army engineer who surveyed Los Angeles in the summer of 1849, named Spring Street in honor of Trinidad Ortega (1832-1903), a San Diego girl whose nickname was Primavera: “Spring”. She was the descendant of notable Californios – Pío Pico was an uncle – and was staying in L.A. at the time. Ord found her charming and chose her vernal sobriquet for the street. (Some say it was previously Calle de Caridad: Charity Street – a name once owned by another downtown thoroughfare – and originally Calle Cuidado: Caution Street.) The story is often embellished to include a romance, with “Primavera” being Eddie’s pet name for Trini. That part is surely hogwash, but the rest? It’s hard to tell. There’s no documentation from the era – any articles about the street name’s inspiration only pointed to the season of spring until 1911, when Trinidad Ortega de la Guerra (she married in 1853) was cited as the namesake. Her daughter Josefa de la Guerra Savin (1860-1946), guest of honor at a 1932 luncheon celebrating Spring Street’s long-overdue extension north of Temple, was the primary source for this theory. Whether she made it up, or her mother insisted it was so, I cannot say, but note that Santa Barbara, where Trinidad Ortega de la Guerra lived from 1853 onward, has its own Spring Street: it crosses both Ortega and De La Guerra streets.
Find it on the map:
