Yosemite Drive was originally called Sycamore Avenue. When the City of Los Angeles annexed Eagle Rock in 1923, the street’s name had to be changed to avoid postal conflicts with Hollywood’s Sycamore Avenue. (Hollywood itself was annexed by L.A. a few years earlier.) “Yosemite” is a no-brainer name for a California street, and I assume it was chosen simply because it hadn’t been used in L.A. yet. The etymology of the name itself – coined for Yosemite Valley in 1851 – is a matter of dispute: some claim it’s a corruption of the Miwok term for “grizzly bear”; others believe it was Miwok for “killers” and referred to a fierce native tribe, the Ahwahneechee, who lived in said valley.
Find it on the map:
