Not far from my house is the site of Camp Cameron, where annual musters were held before the Civil War.  It was then an actual camp, for new recruits, until neighbors complained about how rowdy the young troops were, and they were moved elsewhere.  The land, straddling Cambridge and Somerville, was developed in the 1880s.

The short little streets there have names from the Seven Days Battles of the Peninsular Campaign:  Malvern, Glendale, Seven Pines, and Fair Oaks*.  Never mind that Seven Pines and Fair Oaks are two names for the same battle.  I like to think that these were names the soldiers gave to roads between lines of tents, which hung around until houses were built there, but another street is named Yorktown, which is a developer-type name, used for high schools, shopping centers, etc.

History is important to developers.  An attractive conversion of factory buildings to condos on the other side of Cameron Avenue is on a street proudly named Tannery Brook.  In the actual age of tanneries (and there were a lot around here--I live in what was the low-rent, swampy, smelly, Irish and French-Canadian area of town) that would not have been a selling point.

Bloody battles and smelly industrial operations become charming if seen from far enough away.

*I get this wrong all the time:  Seven Pines/Fair Oaks was part of the overall campaign, but not part of the Seven Days Battles.  My apologies to the real buffs.