1920s – Santa Monica city tract map

1906 – Official Map of the City of Santa Monica

1925 – USGS Survey map

1931 – USGS Survey map

1910 – Santa Monica Map

1911 – Santa Monica map

So, there’s this little park in Santa Monica. It’s right near the Volkswagen dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard near 26th Street. Anyway, the park is on a street named Park Drive. So the park is named, “Park Drive Park.”

There’s this riddle I liked as a kid: “Why do people drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?” Anyway, problem solved – right?

So there used to be this rail connector between what is now the Expo line and the trolley that used to run down Santa Monica Boulevard (the “Sawtelle Line”). It’s all gone, but it was well-documented in the maps of the time. The area was originally developed by Boehme et Crosier, a group of local real-estate developers.

The area seems well-documented — I’ve found seven original source maps for this research.