Beaver Street is a funny name for a roadway. It may be named after the animal or maybe it’s named after a Mr. or Ms. Beaver, but all I can think of is the slang name for a woman’s private anatomy.

The Man and I were in Flagstaff, just leaving the free National Forest camping area where we’d spent the night. We were following the directions of the lady in the phone (I’ve since named her Mildred Amsterdam) to get to McDonald’s, and we crossed Beaver Street. Just on the other side of the street, we saw a store called Beaver Street Liquor.

Oh dear! That was funny!  “Beaver” already had a naughty connotation in my mind, but then add in the word “liquor,” and I’m thinking of jokes like “Beaver in the front and liquor in the rear.”

The Beaver Street Liquor store has a nice mural on the side wall. The mural shows a rather tipsy-looking semiaquatic rodent holding a bottle of wine. I like public art, even murals (probably) paid for by capitalist ventures. The Man wanted a photo too, so we turned around and pulled into the store’s tiny parking lot.

According to the store’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pg/BeaverStLiquor/about/?ref=page_internal), it is

a locally owned and operated liquor store. Providing Flagstaff, Arizona with a wide selection of beer, liquor, wine, & spirits. Opened in 1962[.]

I tried to find out the reason for naming the street “Beaver” by doing a Google search. Nothing. I couldn’t find any information on Flagstaff’s Beaver Street. (Granted, my internet searching skills aren’t that great.)

My friend NOLAgirl is a transplant from Louisiana but has made herself quite the Arizona expert after living in the desert state for a couple of decades. I asked her if she knew how the street got its name. She said she had no idea. She said she could explain many other names in Flagstaff, but not that one. She did say many of the streets in that part of town are named for people, but she thought “beaver” was a reference to trade industry and pointed out that Flagstaff was established because of the railroad. So Beaver Street probably has more to do with fur coats and hats than anything naughty.

If anyone has any additional information, please let me know.

I took the photos in this post.