Darius Ogden Mills

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Darius Ogden Mills (September 5, 1825 – January 3, 1910) was a prominent American banker and philanthropist. Once California's wealthiest citizen ^[1].

[edit] Biography

He was born in North Salem, New York and his early career was as a bank clerk and retailer. He joined the California Gold Rush in December 1848, and founded a bank in Sacramento. He invested in gold mining, silver mining in Nevada, forest land near Lake Tahoe, and the Virginia and Truckee Railroad.

In 1864 he founded the Bank of California, which grew large in the 1860s and 1870s, but collapsed due to financial irregularities involving its chief cashier, William Chapman Ralston. Mills used his personal fortune to revive the bank and attract new investment, and within three years, the bank was again strong.

Mills built an estate named Millbrae, which gave its name to the present town that grew up around it. 150 acres of the original estate, bordering San Francisco Bay, were leased by his grandson Ogden L. Mills to be used for Mills Field, now known as San Francisco International Airport. A number of local institutions are named for him, including Mills Hospital, the Mills Estate housing subdivision, and Mills High School.

Later in life, Mills retired from banking, and returned to New York, where he participated in the development of a number of buildings in Manhattan, and full time philanthropy and sitting on the board of directors of a number of charitable and cultural institutions. He died of a heart attack in 1910 at his Millbrae estate.