All I can tell you for sure is that this thoroughfare was born Maple Avenue in 1910 and that seven years later, after the City of Los Angeles annexed the Valley, it was renamed Tampa Avenue to avoid conflicts with DTLA’s own Maple Avenue. Since “Tampa” was chosen by anonymous bureaucrats at the city engineer’s office, it’s impossible to answer the why behind the name. Sure, one of those guys might have come from Tampa, FL – we’ll never know. Or maybe they figured “Tampa” was similar enough to “Maple” – two-syllable, five-letter words that share an “a”, an “m”, and a “p”. Or else they recalled that Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto visited Tampa Bay in 1539 and so they coined Tampa Avenue as a match for De Soto Avenue due west. But since two miles separated Tampa from De Soto, I wouldn’t put money on that last theory.
Find it on the map:
