Lucky Baldwin

Elias Jackson "Lucky" Baldwin (April 3, 1828 – March 1, 1909) was "one of the greatest pioneers"

Move to California

Indian attack on the Baldwin Party near Salt Lake City in 1853, as pictured by the artist Cross, from Lucky Baldwin's description. Image from C.B. Glasscock's 1933 biography Lucky Baldwin: The Story of an Unconventional Success. In 1853, at the height of the California Gold Rush, he decided to relocate to California. An already successful businessman, he decided his future wealth lay in providing food, supplies and accommodations, and not digging for gold. He sold the businesses in Valparaiso and used the profits to purchase wagons and supplies for a trip west.

Before he left Racine, Wisconsin, with his wife and six-year-old daughter, he equipped four wagons and loaded two of them with tobacco, brandy, and tea. The family arrived in Hangtown (later known as Placerville) barefoot and worn out.

Sarah Baldwin lost two infants and in 1862, the Baldwins divorced. During 1875–76, he built the opulent Baldwin Hotel and Theater, located on Powell Street at the corner of Market Street, near the Union Square area. He was rescued from his rooms when the entire building was destroyed by fire in 1898.

Invests in mine stock

When the great Comstock Lode was discovered in Nevada in 1859, he arrived with a load of timber, which he sold and then bought a livery. He made money on several ventures. In payment for a debt, he received 2,000 shares of the Ophir Mine, which was then worth a few cents a share. Using his profits, he slowly invested in several mines: the Hale & Norcross, Ophir and Crown Point at the north end of the Comstock Lode (the Crown Point was actually at the southern, in Gold Hill).

In another stroke of good fortune that cemented his reputation as "Lucky" Baldwin, he left instructions with his broker to sell his Norcross stock if it fell below $800 a foot. (Veins of gold and silver were often sold at the time by the foot.) His resort soon attracted travelers from across the United States seeking luxury accommodations.

He divorced his wife Sarah and in 1875, Baldwin moved to Southern California and bought the Rancho Santa Anita in the fertile San Gabriel Valley from Harris Newmark. Baldwin offered $150,000, but Newmark wanted $200,000. Baldwin at first refused to pay the premium price, but his lawyer Reuben Lloyd told him he should buy it before the price rose further. Baldwin met with Newmark again, carrying a tin-box containing several million dollars, and withdrew $12,500 cash from it as a first payment.

When people began moving to Southern California in large numbers during the 1880s, Baldwin subdivided some of his land, creating the towns of Arcadia and Monrovia, California. A portion of his La Cienega Rancho became the community of Baldwin Hills. The city of Sierra Madre is now located on land he once owned.

A visitor to Santa Anita in 1886 wrote: "The ranch is a principality not unlike a Southern plantation before the [Civil] ar, save that all the laborers are well-paid and well fed." He was the largest employer and the largest taxpayer in Los Angeles County at the time.

Fair employer

At a time of open discrimination and racism in American society, he provided many jobs to Chinese, African-American and Native American workers. He told a reporter that "Chinese are the most reliable laborers I can get." He made news when he hired African-Americans from North Carolina and paid for their train tickets to California. However, ranch workers of all backgrounds were paid only a pittance. In the same year, he was sued by a jilted 16-year-old girl who was awarded $75,000 in damages.

Lillian Ashley (later Turnbull) signed a "wedding contract" with Lucky Baldwin. Los Angeles Herald One woman remembered for accusing him of breach of promise shot and wounded him in 1883 with a pistol inside his luxury Baldwin Hotel, built in 1876 on the northeast corner of Powell and Market St. The woman's name was Fannie Verona Baldwin, a native of Olympia in what was then Washington Territory. Verona herself stated it was not a case of seduction, however, but of rape. He also narrowly escaped death in a San Francisco courtroom on July 2, 1896. He was sued by Lillian Ashley for seduction. While she was on the witness stand, her sister Emma Ashley, walked up behind Baldwin and fired a pistol at him, grazing his skull. Josephine wrote in I Married Wyatt Earp that she and Wyatt were married in 1892 by the captain aboard Baldwin's yacht. Raymond Nez wrote that his grandparents witnessed their marriage aboard a yacht off the California coast. No public record of their marriage has ever been found.

In 2018, Lucky Baldwin was voted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame as one of its esteemed Pillars of the Turf.

Death and legacy

During the 1890s, his wealth diminished, but Baldwin maintained an interest in horse racing and poker. His wife Lillie and his daughters Anita Baldwin McClaughry and Clara Baldwin Stocker were among many relatives and friends at his side when he died at the Arcadia ranch on March 1, 1909.

After Baldwin's death, his estate was managed by his longtime friend and advisor Hiram A. Unruh. Land owned by the estate was relatively worthless upon his death, but ten years after his death, oil was discovered on it. This became the Montebello Oil Fields, which would produce one-eighth of the crude-oil in California, one of the biggest oil fields in the west.

The Baldwin Cottage, and Baldwin Pond are now on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. In 2015, the Cottage and accompanying Coach Barn were opened for regularly scheduled docent-let tours.

The Baldwin Hills mountain range and its affluent Baldwin Hills neighborhood of South Los Angeles were named for him, as was the City of Baldwin Park, the Baldwin Stakes at Santa Anita, the Baldwin Village neighborhood, Baldwin Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains (near Baldwin's 1876 Gold Mountain Mine), Baldwin Beach at Lake Tahoe, and Baldwin Avenue in the San Gabriel Valley, among a number of places. His nickname also appears as the name of three pubs in Pasadena and Sierra Madre.

Lucky Baldwin's Pub in Pasadena is named in his honor.

In 2013, the city of Arcadia installed a 9-foot bronze statue of Baldwin titled A Dawn in the West by artist Alfred Paredes in the Monsignor Gerald M. O’Keefe Rose Garden near the main southern gate of Santa Anita Park race track. The statue was commissioned by two of Baldwin's descendants, Margaux Viera and Heather Gibson.