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Gough Milk?, Cow Hollow
If you live in San Francisco you've probably driven down Gough Street a hundred times, maybe to avoid the traffic and lights on busier streets, but you might not know the street's history. Gough Street runs next to Franklin Street, which was named for Benjamin Franklin and it runs two streets away from Van Ness Avenue, named for former major, James Van Ness. But who exactly was this famous Gough after which the street was named?

In reality Charles Gough was just a poor milkman who worked a route in Cow Hollow on a horse with milk cans tied to the saddle during the 1850s. In 1885 he joined a citizens committee to name the new streets in the just-built Western Addition. When he nominated his own name for one of the streets nobody on the committee objected and so Charles Gough gained his place in San Francisco history. I'd love to confirm the myth that the parallel street, Octavia was the name of Charles Gough's old milk horse but alas he named it after his sister.
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