Back in the early 1980's the Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood California wanted to copyright the name Hollywood. This upset many people that had been using the name Hollywood for years. Perhaps upset the most was the city of Hollywood, Florida, which filed a law suit to protect their use of the name. Because of the law suit, some historical research needed to be done. It was found that the section of Los Angeles known as Hollywood got its name from a nineteenth century estate of the same name in the area. As the story goes, the woman who owned the land was on a west bound train going to visit her land for the first time. Her seat mate, a woman by the name of Mrs. Peck, also owned large tracts of land, but her land was mostly along the Burlington Railway just west of Chicago. The lady with the California land expressed a desire to find a name for her new estate. Therefor, Mrs. Peck mentioned that she owned a large track of land near what is now Brookfield Zoo, and she called her land Hollywood. It seems the lady with the California land thought Hollywood would also be a good name for her estate. As far as Mrs. Peck and Western Springs are concerned, if you trace back to nineteenth century property records, you will find much of the land in Western Springs located near the railroad tracks, has the Peck family name mentioned quite often. Finally, as you may have guessed, the Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood, California lost the law suit.

Answered by Dan Dan , an ibibo Specialist, at 1:12 PM on January 14, 2009