The streets ofLos Angeles may not be lined with gold, but hundreds ofthem were named for men who treated the city like a gold mine and wanted to leave a mark on the map. Understanding the things these men did to get at least roads named for them helps explain why noir writers love L.A. Truly, the whole place is either a con or a crime scene.

    When Irish immigrant William Mulholland arrived in 1877 to dig ditches and work his way up the water company's ladder, L.A. had about 9,000 residents on streets that were neither named nor paved. Then we began growing faster than any city in history. By the turn of the 20th century, there were 100,000 Angelenos, a number that would triple 10 years on. And so it went. By 1930, 1.2 million of us were working one angle or another. If you had ambition, this was where you wanted to be, especially if you also wanted to keep your past in the past. It wasn't Mulholland who'd conceived of L.A as a desert metropolis. His job was merely to ensure that our taps delivered water instead of sand. By enabling a metropolis, that water enriched those who had actually conceived of Los Angeles, and the city's founding fathers thanked their chiefwater engineer by putting his name on America's longest lovers' lane.

For some telling examples, let's say L.A. County is the student bleacher section of Google Earth, and the gag is to spell "LA." The top of the "L" lands on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima.

Isaac Newton Van Nuys moved west from New York after the Civil War. With one look at the virginal San Fernando Valley, he bought thousands of acres and began raising sheep before growing and shipping grain. In the 1880s, he added banking to his resume, becoming vice president ofFarmers and Merchants and a director of Union Bank of Savings-while raising a family with his wife, daughter of another prosperous sheepherder, Isaac Lankershim.

Next stop down the "L" brings us to Van Nuys, where Sherman Way has run about half its east west course from the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank (named for David) to West Hills, where it becomes Platt Avenue (named for George Platt, late president of the one time L.A. Creamery Co.).

Moses H. Sherman arrived at the same time as Mulholland, in whose skills Shernlan's fortunes would soon be entwined. One of his partners was Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler (of the eponymic Valleystreet), son-in-law of the man who may have been most responsible for imagining L.A.: Times founder Harrison Gray Otis (whose own avenue is in Tarzana).

Their union bought thousands of acres in the arid Valley that turned valuable overnight when plans for the aqueduct arose. Sure, you could marvel at the stroke of luck, or you could note that Sherman sat on the water board. As for that middle initial, it stands for Hazeltine, which gives himthe distinction of having two thoroughfares and Sherman Oaks.

South we go-past the strip named for that rarest of men, a socialist land developer, Henry Gaylord Wilshire-to Culver Boulevard. A Nebraskan, Harry Havel Culver fought in the Spanish-American War and studied business before arriving in 1910 to commence his real-estate career under the tutelage of Isaac Newton Van Nuys. Envisioning his own one-and-a-half-square-mile city, he worked the idea by helping to establish public transport and convince filmmakers D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett to open movie making centerpieces (now Sony and Culver studios). Hal Roach followed. In 1917, grateful locals approved the incorporation of Culver City.

Heading toward Howard Hughes Parkway, we arrive at Inglewood's Slauson Avenue, named for J.S. (Jonathan Sayre) Slauson. He came to LA. in 1874, helped start the Los Angeles County Bank and explored Santa Monica, which led to his involvement in light rail. He may have been our city's most accomplished founder: director ofthe Southern Pacific Railroad, citrus farmer, philanthropist, chamber ofcommerce organizer and founder of Azusa. Slauson's final job was on the Board of Education-and it killed him.

Now the "L" turns east, reaching Santa Fe Springs and the tiny street of Bell Ranch. Don't be fooled by its length, because Bell represents one of L.A's most prominent early families. James George Bell had been persuaded to come to L.A. from Missouri by his brother-in-law, Ed Hollenbeck-who himself has plenty of namesakes, including an LAPD division. Bell died in 1911 and left a 200-acre Santa Fe Springs farm to his youngest son, Alphonzo.

Alphonzo Bell was teetering on bankruptcy when he convinced Standard Oil to investigate the noxious smell that rose whenever he stuck a shovel in the ground. And so it was, in the fall of 1919, just days before foreclosure, that Bell Number One began gushing oil. Though Alphonzo soon had a monthly income from the oil leases of $300,000 (about $3.7 million in today's dollars), he continued to live on the property until the house nearly burned in a gas explosion, at which point he and his family drove away.

Good choice. Just west of Beverly Hills; he came upon 4,500 gorgeous acres, which he bought and subdivided into lots that were sold under the name his wife had chosen: Bel Air.

In La Mirada, the left base of the "A," McNally Road was named for Irish immigrant Andrew McNally, who in 1868 cofounded Rand McNally Publishing in Chicago. He navigated his way west and bought a few thousand acres of ranch land he put on the map as "the View" (La Mirada). Then he developed 700 of them into his own estate, on which he grew citrus and olives. The olives were pressed into oil at a plant he'd built, near a railroad station that shipped his goods. Some years later, he got back into publishing with a brochure titled "The Country Gentleman in California," which carried photos and ads for local properties. Suffice it to say, sales were brisk on all fronts.

The apex of the "A" is Monrovia, where the mere 200 yards of Monroe Place hardly do justice to William Monroe. Or do they? The area had been part of a Mexican land grant bought in 1875 by silver miner and rancher E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin (think Baldwin Hills), who began selling off parcels to investors capable of foreseeing vast riches in the form of newcomers arriving by train.

Monroe had been a superintendent on the Southern Pacific, as well as an L.A. city councilman, so he became one of several foreseers, paying Baldwin $30,000 for 240 acres. Then he and some other investors joined their holdings into a company that formed the "Monrovia" subdivision. You can imagine how it ended up being nanled for Monroe when you consider that his partners were Spence (Spenceville?), Bicknell (Bicknellopolis?), Falvey (Falveyovia?) and Crank (enough said).

The right foot of the "A"  falls on Pomona, where Phillips Drive and Phillips Boulevard (as well as Phillips Ranch) are the namesakes of Louis Phillips, a Prussian immigrant who'd come to California for gold. As a foreman on the Rancho Santa Fe, he spent $30,000 on 12,000 acres that, in 1874, were joined to L.A. by the Southern Pacific. In the ensuing land boom, he sold 10,000 acres for the subdivision that became Pomona, and on the remaining acres, he built his mansion in the midst of a cattle and sheep ranch. That generated enough cash for him to begin buying whole blocks in what's now downtown L.A. When Phillips died in 1900, the Times called him the richest man in Los Angeles County-though he would quickly be eclipsed by the Valley profiteers.

This brings us to our final stop, where the trip comes magnificently full circle: In the crossbar of the "A"  lies San Dimas, home to Eaton Drive, named for one Frederick Eaton, who began his two year reign as L.A mayor in 1898 but was best known for steering the municipal purchase ofthe Los Angeles City Water Company, where his protege, William Mulholland, was chief engineer.

Years before, Eaton had visited the verdant Owens Valley and saw trillions of gallons of snow melts erving few ranchers instead of the hordes he envisioned coming to L.A. He concluded that elevation differences between the Owens, at about 4,000 feet, and the San Fernando Valley, at mere hundreds, would allowgravity to deliver water through an aqueduct. The exact engineering he'd leave up to Mulholland. Convincing the public to payfor the aqueduct would be up to the Times. Hoodwinking the legal rights from those ranchers was up to Eaton. And everyone did their jobs beautifully.

Oddly, today we can't even fix the potholes in their streets.