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Alfred Solano Public Notice in the Los Angeles Times Street Smarts When a developer files a tract map with the county, streets are named. Street names were chosen to reflect the developer, his family, or other prominent leaders. Their names are thus handed down to posterity, by way of street names. The land that is now Solano Canyon was originally purchased from the City of Los Angeles by Francisco Sales de Jésus Solano and his wife, María Rosa de las Mercedes Casanova, in 1866. Natives of Costa Rica, they built an adobe and used the land to live and work. Francisco Solano was a butcher in Sonora Town (just north of the Plaza Church along Calle Principal, or Main Street), and he moved his slaughterhouse and soap factory to the Canyon, while maintaining a corral on Main Street. The land was called Solano Ravine on maps by 1876, and the place where Francisco and Rosa lived was known as Solano Cañon.  María Rosa de las Mercedes Casanova married Francisco Solano in the Plaza Church in Los Angeles. Rosa Casanova de Solano was born in Mosquitos, New Granada, in what is now Costa Rica. Ella T. Brooks married Alfred Solano (Francisco and Rosa's son) in 1886. Ella T. Brooks, born in Dunkirk, N.Y. was the daughter of Horatio G. Brooks, founder of the Brooks Locomotive Works of Dunkirk, NY. Ella was one of the most beloved and generous donors to the Barlow Sanitorium. Ella and Alfred Solano donated both the original and the current infirmaries, appropriately named Solano Infirmary.  María Agustina Solano married Guillermo Bouett, an "Oil Dealer" and, later, a Captain in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The Bouett family was originally from Mont-de-Marsan in the Aquitaine, France. Perhaps named for Sergeant Pedro Amador Pedro Amador was a soldado de cuera who settled in California in 1771. He was a native of Cocula, in what is now Jalisco, Mexico, and he was not a Spaniard. Most of the soldados de cuera—soldiers who wore thick, leather jackets, were Mexican-born. Amador enlisted in the Army in 1704 or 1705 and rose to become a sergeant in the Loreto Company. He was in the first expedition to Alta California in 1769. The old sergeant was one of the most worthy of California's earliest settlers. [History of California: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft]. There is no apparent connection between Pedro Amador and the Solano family. Alfred Solano's step-son-in-law, business partner and esteemed friend. Dr. W. Jarvis Barlow purchased the 25 acres of land from J. B. Lankershim for $7,300. He convinced Lankershim to donate back $1,000 of the purchase price, received $1,300 from Alfred Solano, who with his wife (Marion Barlow's remarried mother) would become legendary supporters of Barlow Sanitorium in Elysian Park, and chipped in the balance of $5,000 himself. PARK ROAD & ACADEMY ROAD Park Road is named for its proximity to Elysian Park. Academy Road was formerly the northern extension of Casanova Street and is named for the Los Angeles Police Academy. | | Founder If one person could be said to be the founder of the community now called Solano Canyon, it would be Alfredo Solano. Solano Canyon became a community after 1888, when Alfredo Solano, by then a prominent surveyor and the son of Francisco Sales de Jésus Solano and María Rosa de las Mercedes Casanova, subdivided the southern 16 acres of land to the south of the Stone Quarry Hills—what is now Elysian Park. This property was known as Solano Tract No. 1, and it is all of that part of Solano Canyon between Solano Avenue and Casanova Street and south of the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Solano Tract No. 2 is north of the freeway.
Rosa Casanova-Solano 1840-1884 wife of Ffrancisco Solano 
María Agustina Solano Bouett (daughter of Francisco Solano and Rosa Casanova) 
Guillermo "William" Bouett, husband of María Agustina Solano 
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