Clover Park, Clover Field, and Cloverfield

It's now a park, it's also a monster movie franchise, and it was once an airfield -- but who put the Clover in Clover Park (and Cloverfield and Clover Field)?

103 years ago (in 1923) the Army Air Service (nowadays the U.S. Air Force) opened Clover Field in cooperation with Douglas Aircraft. According to LA STREET NAMES, "Clover Field was named in memory of Lieutenant Greayer “Grub” Clover (1897-1918), a Pasadena boy who served in World War I as an ambulance driver but really dreamed of becoming a pilot. He died in pursuit of this dream, crashing during a practice flight in France."

McDonnel Douglas Aircraft eventually opened a massive (40,000 person) plant in the neighborhood to produce the famous DC-3, which was the plane that gave birth to passenger air service in the 30's and carried the U.S. through World War II.

Clover Field was renamed Santa Monica Airport before WWII, but the name survived as the name of a park Leggers love to run around (Clover Park) and as the street (Cloverfield Blvd.) that used to run from central Santa Monica to the airport.

But what about the monster movies? Producer J.J. Abrams had his office on Cloverfield Blvd. and the code name for the project just used the street name to preserve a sense of mystery. The online marketing for the first Cloverfield movie relied on secrecy and misinformation to stoke audience interest, so the bland street name seemed perfect. In the final story "Cloverfield" is the fictional name given to the government project concerning the monster, but the original Clover was a very real U.S. Army Air flyer who never got his pilot's wings.

Santa Monica Airport is scheduled to close at the end of 2028 and it seems likely that Clover Park is going to expand by a couple of hundred acres, giving Leggers a new long course to run/walk around!