Editor's note: In "Street Whys," our reporter tracks down the origins of street names in the Sacramento region.
When the College Greens neighborhood was built, it was promoted in ads as "designed for the exciting sixties!"
Exciting meant sliding glass doors (ooh!), all-electric kitchens (oh!), sunken living rooms (ah!) and double garages (honk honk!).
That last feature was for dads, according to the ads.
It was a time when the parents of baby boomers were seeing college as a road to success, so the name itself, College Greens, may have been aimed at the upward mobility of the postwar era.
The home models were named for colleges including (ooh!) Harvard, and of course, the streets were named for colleges, too, or the Whys Guy wouldn't bother writing about it.
Many, however, are lesser-known institutions. At least, they must have been unfamiliar to the namers, who spelled some of the colleges wrong.
Bowdoin (the college's correct name) came out as Bowdian and Radcliffe as Radcliff.
One of the main streets is named for a small, somewhat obscure California institution.
"Many do not know that Occidental is a college name," said Jeff Hawkes.
Hawkes brought that to our attention because, he said, Occidental Drive owes its name to his father, Doug Hawkes, the late publisher of the Grapevine Independent in Rancho Cordova. He died in May.
The elder Hawkes went to Occidental on the GI Bill.
When he heard that his brother-in-law, a construction chief on the development, was naming streets for colleges, he asked that a big one be Occidental.
"Occidental is a small, private, tony campus along the lines of Harvard and Yale, a West Coast Ivy League institution," Hawkes told the Whys Guy.
The school is less obscure these days, since President Barack Obama is also an alumnus.
Doug Hawkes and his brother-in-law John Callahan are gone now, and we can't verify the story, but the Whys Guy believes it.
Then again, the Whys Guy also thinks the Stanford Mansion downtown was named for the junior university he attended: Leland Stanford Jr. University - also known as the Occidental College of Northern California.
A to Z on Ziebell Court
Michael Cahill asked us about his street, Ziebell Court in Citrus Heights.
"Myself and the neighbors have always wondered what it was named after," Cahill wrote in an e-mail. "The word Ziebell sounds German, but no one seems to know."
No one knows ... except the Whys Guy, who tracked down Darrell Ziebell (pronounced with the accent on the "-bell") in retirement.
Ziebell, before quitting to open yogurt shops in the '80s, had been a bank vice president with Security Pacific.
"The builder of the property and all the streets was a (bank) client," he said. "We had lent him the money."
In gratitude, the builder named a street for the lender.
Cahill expressed interest in Ziebell Court. The developer paid interest to Ziebell's bank.
The Whys Guy finds it all interesting.
View Occidental Drive in a larger map
Call The Bee's Carlos Alcalá, (916) 321-1987.
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