|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
We rely on street names to find our way, but how often do we stop and ponder the stories behind the names? An ongoing project researching the history of Los Altos’ street names led by two curious locals is the topic of the “What’s in a Name?” exhibition at the Los Altos History Museum, on view through April 7.
Know any secrets behind the streets names in your neighborhood? Visitors also are invited to contribute information themselves, as research continues.
The project got its start when Paul Kuckein retired from a long career in high tech and decided he wanted a new challenge. With an interest in history, he had enjoyed reading publications chronicling the origins of street names in San Francisco, Palo Alto and other local communities.
“I said, ‘Oh, why don’t I see what I can do for Los Altos and find the origin of the street names in Los Altos?'” he recalled in an interview with this news organization. That was about a year ago, and over the summer he was joined by Gina Atkinson, who was similarly curious about her town’s street-name history.
“I ride my bike around my neighborhood and other parts of Los Altos; I had seen these apparently unusual street names and I wondered, ‘How did those come into being?'” she said. She offered to assist Kuckein, and through their joint effort, they said they’ve unearthed information about around half of Los Altos’ approximately 500 distinct street names thus far. Eventually, the plan is to self-publish their findings to become part of the museum’s collection.
Oaks, saints and early settlers
On display in a room of the museum’s J. Gilbert Smith House, visitors can see some artifacts including maps, vintage street signs and photographs and, of course, highlights from the research, including a pie chart that organizes street names by category, such as botanical/zoological terms (15.7%) and “saint in Spanish and English” (2.8%).
“Los Altos is made up of many, many subdivisions, so the idea of ‘neighborhood’ is a rather more general topic that doesn’t translate directly into street names,” Kuckein noted. “Having said that, there are subdivisions where the streets were named after trees; other subdivisions, the streets were named after places in France, other subdivisions where the streets were named after flowers. There is a pattern within a given subdivision, typically.”
The origins of some street names are pretty self-explanatory. Oak trees, for example, are plentiful in the area, so it’s not surprising that Los Altos boasts both Oak Avenue and Oak Street. But the iconic acorn-bearers turn up in even more places in town, as a placard in the exhibition points out: Bright Oaks Court, Colonial Oaks Drive, Montebello Oaks Court, Oakwood Court, Old Oak Court, Live Oak Lane, Blue Oak Lane, Green Oak Lane and Altos Oaks Drive.
Many other Los Altos streets were named after people – including figures from history, local landowners, and friends and families of developers.
Clay Drive, Alexander Way and Candace Way, for example, were named after local landowner Clay Alexander and his daughter.
Loucks was the last name of an early prominent family, while Ray Avenue and Rilma Lane, which branch off of Loucks Avenue, were named after a husband and wife of that same clan. Atkinson’s own street, Berry, appears on maps as early as 1894, she said, and was named for settler Cyrus Berry.
Digging into history
To conduct their research, Kuckein and Atkinson have turned principally to county archives, especially subdivision maps, to determine who owned the land, who subdivided it, and when.
“Further, we were using the genealogy information that’s available online to say, ‘Alright, who were the family members of the people who subdivided the property?'” Kuckein said.
Sometimes, they were able to get directly in touch with descendants of developers, such as in the case of Silvia Drive and Silvia Court (spelled with an i, in the Spanish and Italian style). Sylvia, spelled with a y, was the daughter of the developer of that area, they learned.
“We were fortunate in being able to reach the granddaughter of those developers and she told us that her grandparents had originally submitted the name to the city … with the ‘Sylvia’ spelling,” Atkinson said. “We don’t know for sure why the city decided to change it but one theory is that in Los Altos there was already a Sylvian (Way), and I’m wondering if maybe they were thinking … people were going to get confused having both a Sylvia and a Sylvian so they decided to spell Silvia a little differently.”
In some instances, subdivisions were named after places developers had visited and enjoyed. In the case of Delphi Circle, Atkinson talked to a family member of a developer who divulged that someone in the office had recently been on a trip to Greece and fallen in love with it, thus looking for a chance to name places after favorite Greek destinations, she said.
Replaced and (nearly) forgotten
Some street names have changed over time.
“If you go back to the 1800s, for example, you see that the main street into downtown Los Altos from El Camino was named Giffin Road,” after landowner Oscar Giffin, Kuckein said. Later, it was renamed San Antonio Road, after Rancho San Antonio, which was the name of the Mexican land grant covering much of what is now Los Altos (a small street nearby is still named Giffin Road). Edith Avenue, Atkinson noted, was named for one of Giffin’s daughters.
El Camino Real itself looms large in Los Altos and beyond – so large, in fact, that the evolving story of the “royal road” is itself the subject of its own recent exhibition in the museum’s main first-floor space. Locally, Kuckein pointed out, at some points in history, “what we call El Camino today was the San Francisco-San Jose Road.”
Street ‘oddities’
One category in the exhibit is reserved for what Kuckein and Atkinson have grouped as “oddities” – street names where presumably inadvertent odd spellings have become one-of-a-kind markers, such as Fontainbleau Terrace (missing the middle ‘e’ of the more common French Fontainebleau), Marlbarough Avenue/Court (instead of Marlborough), and Pasa Robles Avenue (it was probably meant to be Paso Robles, meaning “oak pass” – another oak! – in Spanish).
With the project only about halfway complete (they’ve also not yet researched street names in Los Altos’ unincorporated areas, the exhibit materials note), Kuckein, Atkinson and museum staff are hoping that other locals with an interest in Los Altos street-name origins will get in touch and chime in with any information they have. Input can be submitted by emailing Exhibits Specialist Jordan Grealish at jgrealish@losaltoshistory.org, filling out a comment card on site at the museum, or scanning the QR code provided at the exhibition.
“I like to say we’ve done the easy part,” Kuckein said. “We have the challenge now to find the origins of the remaining 200-plus names.”
“What’s in a Name?” is on display at the Los Altos History Museum, 51 S. San Antonio Road, Los Altos, through April 7. Museum hours are Thursday-Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.