Benefield: How some well-known Santa Rosa streets got their names

Driving the streets of Santa Rosa, the origins of some street names are pretty clear.

Washington, Adams and Lincoln streets are pretty easy to suss out. As are 1st, 2nd and 3rd (all running east-west) and A, B and D (all running north-south).

But do you ever wonder why our downtown grid jumps from B to D streets, skipping C altogether? Or do you ponder who Corby Avenue was named after? Or why DeTurk Avenue is DeTurk Avenue (and why it’s nowhere near the DeTurk Round Barn?)

Well, the Historical Society of Santa Rosa scratched that itch for some of us in a recent webinar, taking us into the WABAC machine to explain the who’s who and what’s what behind some of Santa Rosa’s streets.

“I just love history,” said Denise Hill, a member of the historical society who led the webinar. “I just love the fact that these streets and these avenues you have driven down a bazillion times, it’s ‘Oh my god, I had no idea who this street is named after.’”

Hill credited fellow historical society member Karen Stone with helping her dig.

Their list of sources at the end of the presentation is an amateur historian’s delight, including The Press Democrat’s Gaye LeBaron, former Press Democrat editor and publisher Ernest Finley’s, “Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery 1854-2020,” and the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library among others.

“She’s really good at finding the stickier ones,” Hill said of her colleague, Stone. “The research itself is a lot fun, I love every minute of it. The tidbit and nuggets out there about these people?”

Like this one: Dr. John Boyce, after which the four-block street that crosses North Dutton Avenue was named, was known to be a heavy drinker and considered to be “a better doctor drunk than others were sober.”

Boyce was also known, according to the presentation, to visit a local butcher every morning and order a piece of raw meat, insisting that it gave the whiskey “something to work on.”

Still, Hill’s research indicated that Boyce was well-regarded. He was Santa Rosa’s first physician and assisted on coroner’s inquests. He was also president of the Sonoma County Medical Society.

Boyce’s home, relocated after his death, still stands on B Street.

And what about Corby Avenue?

Hill reports that it was named for an Irish woman named Margaretta Corby.

But her connection to Santa Rosa is murky.

Corby reportedly had purchased loads of property in Santa Rosa despite never having lived here (her residence was listed as San Francisco) and being buried in Colma. When she died in 1893, her land holdings in Santa Rosa were valued at $1 million.

What about the genesis of Hermit Way, a short jog of a street that runs parallel to Montgomery Drive and south of Santa Rosa Creek?

Hill found that “Joe the Hermit” was born Guiseppe Fotturini, but changed his name to Joe when he came to the U.S. from Venice, Italy.

The good folks of Santa Rosa apparently changed his name again, this time to “Joe the Hermit” when he took up residence along the creek, making a home out of corrugated metal and car parts.

He worked as a gardener in the summertime and apparently enjoyed the largesse of landowner and developer Hugh Codding, who refused to evict him, Hill said.

Fotturini died in 1957.

And did you know that Santa Rosa was once home to a fairly massive opera house? Me neither.

Apparently Byron Spencer, who was born in 1843 in New York and came to Santa Rosa as a 31-year-old, opened a grocery store at 4th and B streets and later sold insurance.

He was part of a group of local leaders who rallied for the construction of the Athenaeum — a building so big it took up the entire block of D Street between 4th and 5th street.

Spencer Avenue, which runs from Mendocino Avenue to the Grace Tract where it turns into Proctor Drive, is named for him.

Speaking of Mendocino, that grand avenue is the reason C Street no longer exists, Hill said.

Additionally, F Street was removed to make room for the expansion of Santa Rosa Middle School, Hill said.

Back to that DeTurk name.

It comes from Isaac DeTurk, a native of Indiana and son of German immigrants, who came to Santa Rosa and launched the Belle Mount Vineyard in Bennett Valley before Wine Country was Wine Country.

Phylloxera wiped out his vineyards in 1890, so DeTurk then turned to horse breeding to make his way. Which is how and why we have the DeTurk Round Barn in DeTurk Park on Donahue Street (at Boyce) in what was then a neighborhood known as “Little Italy.”

This is just a sampling, Hill had plenty more gems.

And, if the audience interest at the free session Thursday is any indication, there will be more sessions.

Hill promised that the 90-minute session is just the beginning.

“I imagine we’ll have some follow-up, a Part 2, Part 3,” she said.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.