John Warner

One of the most adventurous chapters of Western history began with bad weather in the East. In 1830, at the age of 23, young John Warner, weary of cold New England winters and ill health, journeyed from Connecticut to St. Louis to join a trading expedition headed by the famed mountain man, Jedediah Smith. Right from the start. the rangy six-foot-three Warner, who would later be called Juan Largo (Long John) by his Mexican and Indian friends, hit his stride as a rugged and ready pioneer.

Smith later died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Warner and the expedition ventured farther west passing through a vast and beautiful region known as Valle de San Jose in Southern California, later to become famous under the name of Warner's Ranch.

It was in the City of Angels that Warner met and soon married Anita Gale, an English sea captain's daughter who had been raised as a ward of the widowed mother of Pio Pico, who would later become governor of California under Mexican rule. Warner soon became a naturalized Mexican citizen and in 1844 applied for a land grant that awarded him ownership of the 48,000-acre Valle de San Jose in San Diego, which he had first visited 12 years earlier. He changed the name of the region to Warner's Ranch and officially changed his own name to Juan Jose Warner.

Warner established a trading post on his land, which was the only inhabited stopping place between New Mexico and Los Angeles for wagon trains, gold seekers, soldiers and the Butterfield stagecoach line.

In 1851, Warner and two adopted Indian boys stood off an attack on the ranch by a hundred Cahuilla Indians. The marauders, however, stole all the livestock, demolished and set fire to the house and trading post. Warner was ruined and never returned to his ranch.

Later, he was elected to the California State Senate where, despite his bitter experience at the hands of the Cahuillas, diligently fought for Indians' rights and protection.

Warner then became a newspaper publisher and also served as the first president of the Southern California Historical Society, to which he contributed his invaluable knowledge and experience.