By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Historian
Benjamin Davis Wilson was born in Tennessee in 1811. He traveled to Los Angeles in 1841 as part of the Workman-Rowland Party whose plan was to take a ship to China. The Republic of Mexico wouldn’t permit them to leave. (Daniel Sexton, who named Devil’s Canyon near Cedarpines Park was also a part of the Workman-Rowland travel group.)
Wilson decided to become a Mexican citizen, then purchased a portion of Rancho Jurupa (known today as Rubidoux), from Juan Bandini. A few years later, in 1844 at age 33, since there were few eligible women available for marriage, he was fortunate to be permitted to marry Ramona Yorba, the 15-year-old daughter of Bernardo Yorba, a wealthy, prominent Californio who owned Ranchero Cañón de Santa Ana. (Yorba Linda is named for his family.) This ranchero is now Orange County.
Wilson as a respected land owner was named the Alcalde of the Inland Territory in charge of Indian Affairs, a position he took very seriously. He was known to deal fairly and respectfully with the indigenous people, so they referred to him as “Don Benito.”
Governor Pio Pico asked Wilson in 1845 to pursue a band of “Indian renegades” from the San Gabriel Mission who were stealing horses from the rancheros. Wilson gathered a posse of 44 to chase them. When they approached the mountains, he split the posse into two, sending half up the Cajon Pass, while Wilson and his men went up the Santa Ana Canyon into the San Bernardino Mountains, intending to surround the horse thieves in the desert.
Benjamin Davis Wilson
The government had a bounty on grizzly bear skins, since they were a deadly menace. The posse found an abundance of grizzly bears in the mountains. As a former fur trapper in Santa Fe, Wilson’s posse hunted, killed and skinned 11 grizzlies while camping at the lake (aka Baldwin Lake), known by the local Serrano Indians as Yahaviat, which means “Pine Place.”
The posse met up with the rest of the posse in the desert but never captured the horse thieves. Returning over the mountain, they killed another 11 bears. When they returned with 22 grizzly bear skins, Wilson was asked where did you find so many? “Up on the mountaintop, in the valley where the big bears are,” thus naming Big Bear Valley.
Despite being a Mexican citizen, during the 1846 Conquest of California, Wilson became a prominent sea captain in the U.S. Army. After the end of the Mexican-American War, California became a U.S. state in 1850.
Ramona had died in 1849, so Wilson married Margaret Hereford, who was a widow. They had four children.
Wilson was elected to the Los Angeles Common Council. A year later he was elected as the second mayor of Los Angeles. He was a Los Angeles County Supervisor (1853, 1861–64) and elected to three terms in the California State Senate.
In 1863, Wilson bought Rancho San Pascual, which included much of modern-day Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, Altadena, San Gabriel and Alhambra. Along with Phineas Banning they worked to develop the port of Los Angeles at Wilmington during the Civil War. Wilson was a founding father of what became the University of Southern California.
Los Angeles was growing and needed building lumber. Most of the lumber at that time was coming from the San Bernardino Mountain lumbermills, plus Wilson had a winery that needed wine barrel wood. He led a group into the San Gabriel Mountains looking for suitable lumber, establishing a trail up to the mountain’s summit that became known as Mount Wilson.
Wilson died in 1878 leaving quite a legacy, including being the grandfather of General George S. Patton.
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