Phineas Banning
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| Phineas Banning | |
|---|---|
 Nineteenth century American businessman and entrepreneur, founder of the Port of Los Angeles.
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| Born | 1830 Wilmington, Delaware, USA |
| Died | 1885 Wilmington, California, USA |
Phineas Banning (1830-1885) was an American businessman, stagecoach driver, entrepreneur, and general known as 'the Father of the Port of Los Angeles.' His drive and ambition laid the foundations for what would become one of the busiest ports in the world.
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[edit] Early life
Banning was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1830, the seventh of eleven children. At the age of thirteen he moved to Philadelphia to work in his oldest brother's law firm. By his late teens Banning was working on the dockyards of Philadelphia. At the age of twenty, Banning signed up to work a passage to a then-exotic destination--Southern California.
[edit] California and enterprise
Banning arrived in San Pedro, California in 1851, after a long land and sea voyage that included crossing the isthmus of Panama before taking another ship to California. The twenty-one year old was ambitious and worked in the fishing village of San Pedro, initially as a store clerk, and later as a stagecoach driver on the line that connected the hamlet with the pueblo of Los Angeles, a town of less than 2,000 20 miles (30 km) to the north.
Banning began his own staging and shipping company. By the 1860s Banning wagons were traveling to Salt Lake City, the Kern River gold fields, the new military installation at Yuma, Arizona, the Mormon settlement at San Bernardino, and in an arc around the Southern California region.
Banning was not content to consolidate business interests in staging. He also began expanding the harbor and docks at San Pedro from their beginnings as illegal exchange sites for mission contraband during the Spanish and Mexican eras, and made them efficient enterprises. In the late 1850s Banning and a group of Southern California investors purchased 640 acres (2.6 km²) of land adjacent to San Pedro for port expansion. The land purchase was incorporated as Wilmington, after Banning's Delaware birthplace, and his facility became known as Banning's Landing. Banning invested the profits from his trade networks into the development of a more sophisticated port complex and for the creation of roads, telegraphs and other connections to Los Angeles. In 1859 the first ocean-going vessel anchored in Los Angeles-Wilmington harbor, and the 1860s saw the beginning of small-scale maritime trade between San Pedro and ships anchored in the deeper parts of the harbor. After government-funded dredging made a deep water harbor and breakwater a reality, the port continued to grow.
[edit] Family life
Banning married Rebecca Sanford, the younger sister of his first California employer. Phineas and Rebecca had eight children, of which three survived into adulthood--William Banning (1857-1946), Joseph Brent Banning (1862-1920), and Hancock Banning (1865-1925). Family life was relatively stable in the Banning household, and Phineas was a doting, if distant father to his three boys, who grew up around the expanding docks in San Pedro. Rebecca Sanford died in childbirth in 1868, and the infant, Vincent Banning, died as well. Banning subsequently married a wealthy heiress, Mary Hollister, whose family lent the name to the city of Hollister, California. Phineas and Mary had three children, two of which survived to adulthood--Mary H. Banning (1871-1953) and Lucy Tichenor Banning (1873-1929).
[edit] Southern Californian development: 1860-1880
[edit] Civil War California
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, several Southern states broke away to form the Confederate States of America, beginning the American Civil War (1861-1865). The effects of the war were felt in California, and particularly in Los Angeles, which had many Confederate sympathizers, an alarming development for the new territory. An astute businessman and a vocal patriot, Banning and fellow Californian politician Benjamin Wilson donated adjacent plots of land in Wilmington for a military base. The outpost, named Drum Barracks, or Camp Drum (1861-1871), served as headquarters of the Union's Southwestern command for the state of California and territory of Arizona. The move brought Union troops to Wilmington, where they realized that all spending money would be reincorporated into Banning's business enterprises, further enriching Banning. After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, Camp Drum decomissioned, but the port and harbor continued to grow.
The American government presented Banning with an honorific title, that of brigadier general of the California first brigade. The title was purely symbolic, yet Banning insisted on being referred to as "General Banning" for the last two decades of his life.
[edit] 1870s: Railroads, industries, and breakwaters
Banning spent the 1870s in a frenzy of activity. He worked as senator in the California state senate, campaigning for greater transportation connections to the city of Los Angeles and the growing port, his personal project. Banning eventually pushed through the plan for a small railroad linking Wilmington/San Pedro with the main city of Los Angeles, effectively halving the time necessary for the trip, but the joy was short-lived. The Southern Pacific Railroad began building track to connect Southern California to the greater national railroad lines, and demanded much of Los Angeles' prime real estate, an enormous sum of money, and Banning's small connector line railroad in exchange for adding Los Angeles as a terminus on the railroad. Realizing that Los Angeles would wither into nothingness if the company bypassed it, the city complied and Banning surrendered his hard-earned railroad.
Several personal successes marked the decade for Banning. The first breakwater was built for the nascent port in 1873, and Banning began to work for the Southern Pacific as a railroad agent. By 1880, the 50 year old Banning had retreated to the peacefulness of his life in Wilmington and managed several smaller business interests. On a business trip to San Francisco in 1884 Banning was struck by a streetcar and eventually died of his injuries in 1885.
Banning's legacies lived on, and his dreams were realized with the federal approval of the Port of Los Angeles in the early twentieth century, and the completion of a full breakwater in 1914, creating one of the busiest harbors in the world. Banning's chief residence, constructed in Wilmington in 1863, is open to the public as a museum and display depicting Victorian era California life.
