Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,724

This is the grave of Phineas Banning.

Born in 1830 in Wilmington, Delaware, Banning seems to have grown up on the cusp of the middle class in a growing America. He came from a huge family, was one of 13 kids. By about 1846, he had moved to Philadelphia to work in his brother’s law firm, but then he also worked on the docks. In 1850, he decided to have the great adventure that so many young men were having at that time–going to California to make his fortune. Unlike most, he actually did. He got to California in 1851 over the Isthmus of Panama route. One reason he made his fortune in California was avoiding gold mining entirely. Rather, he got a job as a store clerk in San Pedro, then drove a stagecoach on the route to Los Angeles, then a small town about 20 miles south of his new home.

Banning started his own stagecoach in Los Angeles and ran routes all over the place, all the way to Salt Lake City. While most of the attention we pay to California in the 1850s is in the San Francisco area and up into the Sierra foothills where the best gold was, all kind of things were happening in southern California, an often extremely violent place. Gold miners were trying to dig down there, with some success along the Kern River. Mormons sent out additional groups to expand their mini-empire and they founded the city of San Bernardino. The military set up a fort at Yuma. Banning worked his connections in Washington to promote federal funding for a road between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, which began in the mid 1850s. So it was a good business opportunity for the man who could manage it, with the shortages of water and extreme temperatures that defined much of this region.

Banning got interested in expanding beyond the stagecoaches. Basically, it was his idea to create the modern port of San Pedro. He and his partners started buying up land around the Port of San Pedro. At the time, this was a very small place that had some experience in moving contraband during the Mexican War of Independence and then the American War to Steal Half of Mexico to Expand Slavery. Banning wanted to make it a hub of trade on the west coast, challenging the more developed trading centers around San Francisco Bay. This was a dicey operation that paid off. The reason it was so dicey is that it would take years to pay off and required attracting federal investment at a time when Washington D.C. still debated thing such as internal improvements. But Banning had his profitable trading business and he used the profits to expand his new port, building good roads and telegraph lines. At first, ocean going vessels had to remain pretty far out (sandbars) and smaller boats would come out and do the training. But eventually, and this was the big gamble, the federal government decided to put in the resources to dredge the port.

Banning was a big time Republican and this was not so common in southern California. That state’s political machine was largely dominated by pro-secession Democrats and their center was Los Angeles. Banning used his money and land to raise troops and develop a military base there. He was betting on Lincoln, sure, but he also really believed in the Union. This land became Camp Drum, which the Army used for the next ten years and was its base of operations for California and Arizona. Banning became good buddies with Winfield Scott Hancock after the war, when the general was stationed there. The deal also enriched Banning. As it turns out, the fort was really well constructed, impressing visitors. Then, as part of the deal, control of the land reverted to the owners after the war, i.e., Banning and friends. But because of the fort’s quality and proximity to a semi-functional port, it became much more of a business hub during those years. So Banning got to take advantage of all this after 1865. Interestingly, one of Banning’s business partners in this deal was Benjamin Wilson, who is known if at all today for being the guy Mt. Wilson is named after. Well, Wilson was a secessionist and seems to have been hedging his bets, hoping the Confederacy won but making sure he was going to make money if the Union won. Ah, the glories of patriotism.

By the time, railroads were coming in and Banning knew these were key to his ports and transportation empire. Being a highly connected Republican, he used all the tricks in the book to get in on the action. This was the era when a lot of men stupider than Banning could just stumble into endless railroad wealth if they were lucky and corrupt enough (hello, Leland Stanford!). So in 1868, he financed southern California first railroad, the Los Angeles & San Pedro, which he then sold to Stanford and the rest of the so-called Big Four who ran the Southern Pacific (as well as the Central Pacific) and made himself a bit of money. But he most certainly did not dominate in this industry. Rather, the leaders forced him into a subservient role. He didn’t have enough juice nationally to compete with them and of course they were happy to pay off whoever needed paying if they would go along. The Big Four basically threatened Los Angeles into oblivion, saying if the city didn’t give them whatever they needed, they wouldn’t hook up a terminus to it. That forced Banning to basically work for them. But he still had his port and while it would not get as big as San Francisco during his life, he still did quite well and survived the economic upheavals of the 1870s without too many blows to his personal fortune.

Later in life, Banning spent most of his time back in Wilmington, managing business interests there. His later years were marked by bad health, including liver and kidney problems. I assume that means he was a massive alcoholic, as so many people were in that era. He was also run over by an express wagon while in San Francisco and suffered pretty bad injuries from that. He died in San Francisco in 1885. He was 54 years old.

It took till the early 20th century for the federal government to complete the work Banning always envisioned and of course today, the Port of Los Angeles is an enormously important part of the global economy. His sons, all in their 20s at the time of dad’s death, took his money and developed the tourist mecca of Catalina Island and run it as a personal paradise, with tourism but also with monopoly transportation and governance control over it.

Evidently there’s a whole Banning Museum in California. Like all house tours, I am sure it is boring.

Phineas Banning is buried in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit other transportation developers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Leland Stanford is in Palo Alto, California and Ransom Olds is in Lansing, Michigan. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.