Jarod Opperman / The BulletinWall Street and Franklin Avenue intersect in downtown Bend. Wall was named for a lava rock wall that partitioned the Drake family’s property from Main Street. Franklin Avenue’s origin is unknown.

Bend’s street names cover the gamut: state names, tree names, historical names, Robin Hood-themed names. But how did the city’s streets, roads, avenues and courts gain their titles? The answer is not as simple as you’d imagine.

The odonyms marking an address — aside from the common titles, such as Main or Maple or Second found in most cities around the nation — occurred in a variety of ways and offer insight into a town’s history and, sometimes, lack of imagination.

Washington, D.C., wears the names of all 50 states on its roads. Philadelphia hosts a high number of tree-named avenues. Salt Lake City evokes its founding history and utilizes the Mormon Grid system for its streets.

Though it might seem like “the sky’s the limit” for christening street signage, these days most cities and counties have certain criteria that must be met before a suggestion can be accepted as an official street name. But that doesn’t mean that Bend’s streets are not filled with unique history.

“If you go down into some of the older neighborhoods,” said Les Joslin, author of “Legendary Locals of Bend,” “you will find the streets named after the settlers of Bend.”

A road, a butte and a glen

Bend owes a great deal to its early homesteaders — the men and women who settled the land that upwards of 85,000 people now call home. It’s only fitting that the names of some of these settlers remain, long after they themselves have moved on.

In the 1880s, Marshall Clay Awbrey arrived in Bend when it was just a pioneer town. According to Joslin, arriving in Bend is pretty much all Awbrey did. Joslin calls Awbrey a “pioneer namedropper.”

“He moved here, but he didn’t do anything,” Joslin told The Bulletin in April. “His name got applied to things for no apparent reason. Regardless of his contribution, or lack thereof, we can at least thank Awbrey for lending his name.”

Brothers in building

Branching off of Third Street is a relatively short road called Brosterhous, named for Ed and George Brosterhous. But while the road might be the only namesake of the brothers, their contributions to the city extend much further. After settling in Bend in 1903, the brothers set to work building it. Most of the actual constructing was done by Ed. George died in 1914 after falling off of Reid School’s roof while they were building it. Ed went on to construct Kenwood School, Bend High School, St. Francis Catholic Church and a number of residences in the area.

A 108-year-old name

In 1893, Ohio-born Ovid William Brockett Riley and his family left their Kansas home and arrived in Bend. By 1908, Riley had a road named in his honor — Ovid W.B. Riley Road. Sometime after 1914, when most of Bend’s other roads were given new names, Ovid W.B. Riley Road was shortened to its current form — O.B. Riley Road. Riley worked at the Shevlin-Hixon Lumber Company until it closed in 1950. He died in 1962 at 87 years old.

Why all the market roads?

Driving around Central Oregon, it isn’t uncommon to traverse several market roads: Butler Market Road, Deschutes Market Road, Reed Market Road, Arnold Market Road.

In 1919, the Oregon Market Roads Act was passed, providing money for counties to improve their roads if those roads qualified as market roads — roads that were used as a route for commerce. At the time of the legislation, Deschutes County was new and needed all the help it could get to fund its roads. So, “every road that could be flagged a market road was flagged a market road,” said Kelly Cannon-Miller at the Deschutes Historical Society. “(The county) was like ‘oh, yes, we’re taking advantage of that.’”

States for trees

Bend streets switched names between 1912 and 1916, according to the Deschutes Historical Society’s map archives. But, even though entire clusters of streets were given new names in this four-year period, whoever was naming the streets tried to stick with a theme. That is, with the exception of Franklin Avenue.

In 1912, the strip of streets starting in downtown at Oregon Avenue had names referencing states and trees. Avenues like Oregon, Minnesota, Ohio and Kentucky ran right into streets like Pine, Alder and Koa. In 1912, what is now Franklin Avenue was split into two different streets — Ohio Avenue on the west side of town and Koa Street on the east. When all of the streets got their nominal overhaul in 1916, the tree names were forfeited for state names and the state names were forfeited for, well, other state names. Kentucky Avenue became Louisiana Avenue, California turned into Kansas, Pine Street morphed into Delaware Avenue and Ohio/Koa became … Franklin.

No one quite knows the logic behind this decision, but Cannon-Miller thinks it might have something to do with the fact that Franklin runs smack into another series of streets with names that harken to revolutionary America, joining roads like Revere and Lafayette.

What really is in a name?

Sometimes a name is nothing more than the creative labors of the land developer. Take, for example, Nottingham Square, a housing development located in the southeastern part of the city. Whoever developed this neighborhood of houses clearly appreciated the classic tale of the hero in green who robbed the rich to feed the poor, as evidenced by the fact that houses line streets like Robin Hood Lane, Maid Marian Court and Sherwood Forest Drive.

One neighborhood over, the streets are bedecked with the names of Old Testament kings. Homeowners in this part of town can live on King Hezekiah Way, King Solomon Lane or, for the biblically astute, the more obscure King Jeroboam Avenue. A short drive north and suburban Bend steps back into the old days of the Wild West with names like Laramie Way, Carson Way and Diablo Way.

The Wall of Wall Street

From New York City’s famous business district all the way down to the most obscure and sparsely populated towns, most cities have a Wall Street. The Wall Street in downtown Bend has been on the map since 1912. Bend’s Wall Street is special, however, Cannon-Miller said.

Wall Street has a direct tie to some of Central Oregon’s most notable landscape — lava rocks. When mapmakers and land-plotters were exploring Deschutes County, assigning names to streets and towns, there was a lava rock wall that partitioned off the Drake family’s property line from Main Street. Main Street then became Wall Street based on that lava rock wall. So why is the next street Bond? No one really knows, and the team at the historical society is still trying to track that story down. Some streets may just remain a mystery.

“We’ve chased names a lot,” Cannon-Miller said, “There’s a handful of them that we’ve chased as far as we can and there’s just nothing … there’s just speculation.”

If you have any information on Bend history for streets such as Bond Street, Franklin Avenue or Hawthorne Avenue, call the Des Chute Historical Museum at 541-389-1813.

— Reporter: 541-382-1811, khanson@bendbulletin.com