This street commemorates a California pioneer family and their ready-for-adventure surname. John Reid Wolfskill (1804-1897) was a Kentucky migrant who became a major landowner in the Sacramento Valley. I’m not sure that he spent any time in Los Angeles, but his brother William (1798-1866) amassed large holdings across the Southland, was the region’s most profitable winemaker, and is even credited with founding California’s citrus industry. He was a big deal. Other notable Wolfskills included John Jr. (1836-1913), who stubbornly held on to the ranch land that would ultimately become Westwood, and William’s son Joseph (1843-1927), who inherited his father’s orange grove in DTLA. (Central Avenue was originally called Wolfskill Street because it led to that property.) But it was John Jr.’s daughter Edith Wolfskill (1872-1929) who would receive the most press, and for the worst reason: suffering from mental illness, she was found dead in Solano County after one of her many disappearances. It made headline news nationwide, with journalists dubbing her the “mad heiress”.
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