Attorney Walter J. Trask (1862-1911) was awarded this street in 1902 for backing the new Playa del Rey townsite. Trask was a Maine lad who studied law while toiling at watch factories and streetcar companies in Boston. In or around 1882, he relocated to St. Paul, MN, where he passed the bar and wed his first wife Blanche, with whom he would have his only child, Caroline. That same year, Trask’s brother Dummer Kiah Trask (1860-1914), who wisely went by “D.K.”, settled in Stockton, CA to be a teacher. He too became a lawyer in 1890 and moved down to Los Angeles that autumn, just as Trask himself was doing so. Trask partnered with influential attorney John Bicknell and made his name as a corporate mouthpiece. He married his second wife Virginia the same year Trask Avenue was named. Alas, a stroke struck him at DTLA’s exclusive California Club; he died two days later, not yet 49 years old. D.K. Trask was also felled by a stroke – in the middle of a trial.
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