There's no Batman Boulevard or Superman Way in Southern California – but there is at least one big street named for an adventure hero: Tarzana.

The city of Tarzana used to have an equally poetic name: Mille Flores – a thousand flowers. Bill Robertson, director of L.A.'s Bureau of Street Services, says that's the name newspaper boss and landowner Harrison Otis gave his San Fernando Valley ranch.

"He sold that little plot of land to a guy named Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan fame."

"Tarzan of the Apes" was first published in All-Story Magazine in 1912. Burroughs got $700 for it – and lots of rejections from book publishers. When the Tarzan story finally came out in hardback in 1914, it was a best seller.

A Tarzan movie – the first of dozens of Tarzan films – premiered four years later. A year after that, Edgar Rice Burroughs bought the Mille Flores ranch and started selling home sites. In 1930, the town got a post office and the locals voted on its name: Tarzana.

(Airdate: 12/6/2008)