Hiram A. Reid, in his 1895 book History of Pasadena, stated that this street was opened in 1888 (as Yolo Avenue) on a tract owned by brothers George and Charles Patten and that it was named by their surveyor “Piper”, who wished to honor his home in Yolo County, CA. Not quite: the tract’s surveyors were in fact James E. Place (1829-1891) and Charles H. Pieper (1862-1911), and while Place came from New Hampshire, Pieper was born in NYC: his father John was Frederick Law Olmsted‘s assistant engineer at Central Park. In 1867, the Piepers settled in San Jose, where John was hired as city engineer. Charles, who would later become San Jose city engineer himself, was only in Pasadena for about five years. I found no connection between him and Yolo County (said to have derived its name from a native Patwin word meaning “place filled with rushes”, i.e. wetland grasses), and he was back in San Jose by the time Reid wrote his book, so he couldn’t help the author fact-check. In short: we’ve got the who and the what behind Yolo Street, but not the why.
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