Early Beverly Hills

Way before Rodeo Drive and the pink palace of the Beverly Hills Hotel were built, way before the namesake hillbillies, its zip code, and Eddie Murphy's detective techniques reaffirmed its place in popular culture, and way before its 1,001 mansions, Beverly Hills was comprised of wild canyons and ranchlands. Burton Green, one of the three original land developers of the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, named this place of severe terrain after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, a 19th-century spa. Since...