Originally called Pleasant Street, residents had this road renamed in 1896 as it kept getting confused with nearby Pleasant Avenue. The chief petitioner was one Thomas W. Collins (1850-1910), who suggested Utah Street as the new name. Did Collins have any ties to Utah? Indeed he did: a Canadian himself, he was living in Salt Lake City in 1886 when his son Robert was born. Perhaps not coincidentally, Pleasant/Utah street was on a tract owned by Henry J. Woollacott (1858-1910), a native of SLC. In fact Woollacott’s baby brother Howard married Collins’s daughter Josephine later in 1896! Both Woollacott and Collins were interesting guys. Woollacott came to this city c. 1877 and, after making it big as a liquor merchant, made it even bigger in banking and real estate. Collins, a bartender back in Utah, moved to L.A. around 1888 and gained local fame late in life: after going blind from illness in 1898, he unexpectedly became a guide at City Hall. “Blind Tom” was known and loved throughout town.
Find it on the map:
