Temescal means “sweat lodge” in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. California has at least two other notable Temescals: a valley in Riverside County and a neighborhood in Oakland – both early 1800s Spanish land grants. It’s been posited that each was indeed named for a tribal sweat lodge that was found on the land, although obviously the local tribespeople wouldn’t have used the Nahuatl word for it. I found no evidence that such a lodge ever existed here in Temescal Canyon, so its name is possibly a mistranslation or just employed to sound “Indian”. It was first mentioned in an 1878 newspaper and more thoroughly discussed in 1906 when it was the scene of a headline-grabbing crime: a Bavarian butcher named Anton Besold shot his wife Claudie deep in the canyon, then fled cross-country and married another woman a month later. He was sentenced to life in San Quentin. Today’s Temescal Gateway Park was, in the 1920s, the Southern California center of the Chautauqua movement. The street itself was named in the 1930s.
Find it on the map:
