Michael D. White - The Port of Los Angeles

For generations, the economy of the Spanish imperial backwater that was Southern California centered around the Mission San Gabriel, about 40 miles inland, and the ubiquitous cattle herds that covered the landscape providing the tallow and hidesknown as California greenbacksthat formed the lifes blood of the regions trade activity.

In 1821, Spain ceded California to Mexico, and over the coming three decades, the hide and tallow trade flourished with regular visits by Yankee sailing ships to a lone hide house on the cliffs overlooking what is now the ports Main Channel.

Priced at $2 each, the stinking hides were processed and stacked into the ships fetid holds and carried back around Cape Horn to tanneries in New England, where they were transformed into boots, belts, shoes, and animal harnesses.

In a story with a full cast of memorable characters, perhaps the most intriguing and compelling is Phineas Banning, the transplanted New Englander who arrived in San Pedro in 1851 at the age of 19, whose entrepreneurial vision and drive would later earn him the title Father of Los Angeles Harbor.

Over the following 35 years, the hulking, largely self-educated Banning exercised a keen nose for business by spawning a series of ventures that would not only expand his own entrepreneurial horizons but also lay the foundation for the development of the harbor into a truly world-class port.

Bannings first venture was a local passenger and freight hauling network that eventually linked his wharf with points in five Western states.

California state senator Phineas Banning introduced the first railroad bill in Sacramento in 1867 and later lobbied to have the U.S. Congress fund the first dredging of the harbors Main Channel and the construction of its first breakwater.

In 1869, the transplanted Yankee oversaw the construction of a rail line linking the harbor at San Pedro and the burgeoning town of Los Angelesa 21-mile stretch of track comprising the first railroad in Southern California.

In 1885, the year Banning died, the port moved more than 50,000 tons of lumber, coal, manufactured goods, agricultural products, and other goods across the wharves he was largely responsible for building.

HIDE HOUSE, 1823. San Pedros first warehouse was built on what is now the parade ground of Fort MacArthur on the bluff overlooking the harbors Main Channel. By the end of the 1800s, all that remained of the structure were the weed-choked ruins seen in this image taken some 70 years after it was built. (Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust Collection, University of Southern California . )

RICHARD HENRY DANA, 1835. In poor health, the inexperienced 19-year-old Richard Henry Dana dropped out of Harvard University and signed on to serve as a common seaman aboard the Yankee brig Pilgrim . The ship, owned by the Boston shipping firm of Bryant and Sturgis, sailed for California via Cape Horn to San Pedro, where the ship would load cattle hides and tallow for the return trip to New England. The crew of the Pilgrim was tasked with hauling the reeking cargo by hand from the hide house on the bluff overlooking the harbor down to small boats, which were then rowed out to the waiting brig. Dana chronicled the voyage and his labors in his classic book Two Years Before the Mast and was not altogether thrilled with his visit to what he called the hell of Southern California. (Authors collection.)