Welcome to Avenal ...
Although we found mention of Avenal during our research, we have little information about it.<1> Given the context of how Avenal was mentioned, we believe that it was a community rather than a locale or some type of landmark. We have done a cursory search and if it was a community, we haven't been able to find any evidence that it still exists..
While we are confident that Avenal was located in San Luis Obispo County, we don't know its actual location within the county.
We've added Avenal to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. We would especially like to find the location of Avenal - knowing its coordinates, we can explore things like its relationship to neighboring communities, nearby cemeteries, etc. If you can help us with Avenal, please Contact Us.
From The Origin of Certain Place Names,<2> the origin of Avenal is described as "A Spanish term, meaning an oat field or a field sown with oats."
Time Zone: The area where we believe that Avenal might be (or was) located is in the Pacific Time Zone (PST/PDT) and observes daylight saving time
We believe that Avenal would be found within the (805) area code.
Adding Avenal to Our Gazetteer ...
Our notes show that the earliest dated mention that we've found for Avenal was in the Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895).
We also found Avenal in the The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (Second Edition).
For more details about the above, see References and Mentions for Avenal on our Genealogy Page.
Communities Also Named Avenal ...
Using our Gazetteer, we have found that there are two California communities named Avenal: This one is located in San Luis Obispo County and the other is located in Kings County.
For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Avenal.
Other Roadside Stops ...
Find a Community within California
Off-the-Road Links ...
The official website for San Luis Obispo County: www.co.slo.ca.us/
The official website for State of California: https://www.ca.gov/
Footnotes ...
| <1> | If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer. For example, we might find a sentence like "He went north past Avenal and then turned west". While Avenal could be some kind of landmark, we think that it's more likely to be a community. We've added Avenal as a placeholder with the hope that we'll be able to add more information in the future. Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Mile's to see Pete ... Mile's is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name. Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time. Also keep in mind that Avenal could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out. |
| <2> | The full book title is The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (Second Edition). See our References and Mentions section for Avenal. |