Hooray For Hollywood!

February 1, 2007 1:15 AM

120 year ago today, on February 1, 1887, Harvey Wilcox, originally a prohibitionist from Kansas, filed a grid map of Hollywood with the Los Angeles County recorder's office, carved from a nondescript plot of land he owned in Southern California. The rest, as they say, is history. Hooray For Hollywood!
posted by amyms (11 comments total)

years* geez!
posted by amyms at 1:15 AM on February 1, 2007

More Hollywood history tidbits.
posted by amyms at 1:24 AM on February 1, 2007

"Burn, Hollywood, burn!"

-Chuck D
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:33 AM on February 1, 2007

I rightklick on the site (to go back) and only get a pop-up with a copyright notice. This is usually just annoying, but when it happens on a page which is wholly lifted from Wikipedia, it really bugs me...
posted by Harald74 at 3:22 AM on February 1, 2007

Otherwise, interesting story!
posted by Harald74 at 3:22 AM on February 1, 2007

Which site, Harald? (there are several sites in the post)...And, why would you need to right-click to go back? Isn't it easier just to click your browser's "back" button?
posted by amyms at 3:39 AM on February 1, 2007

"We begin bombing in five minutes."
posted by Eideteker at 4:56 AM on February 1, 2007

More on the name, from Erwin G. Gudde's authoritative California place names: the origin and etymology of current geographical names (4th ed.):

There is a Hollywood in County Wicklow, Ireland, and the word occurs as a place name in the states of Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina, where the American holly (Ilex opaca) is native; and in Minnesota, where it is apparently a transfer name, like our Hollywood. According to Tom Patterson. Mrs. Wilcox heard the name from a fellow passenger on a trip east. Mr. Wilcox imported two holly trees to justify the name, but they did not survive in the temperature of southern California.

Nice post!
posted by languagehat at 6:17 AM on February 1, 2007

I love that California Place Names book. I've got it on my California history shelf next to a lot of Black Panther memoirs.
posted by serazin at 8:30 AM on February 1, 2007

120 years from imaginary grid to fetid hellhole.

The Internet did it in less than 40.
posted by quite unimportant at 11:46 AM on February 1, 2007

My great aunt lives in Hollywood. It's kinda run down. She played a bar girl in Citizen Kane and married a saxophonist from Benny Goodman's band. Now she lives alone, at 94, in an apartment.

What gets me about Hollywood were all the well-dressed young white people asking me for "spare change".
posted by Poagao at 10:57 PM on February 1, 2007