Banning Company Records

The collection consists of legal papers, correspondence, letter books, ledgers, and account books related chiefly to the Banning Company, Wilmington harbor, Wilmington property, and Santa Catalina Island. There are also papers of the various subsidiary firms of the Banning Company, as well as Banning family letters, and receipts of William and Hancock Banning. After 1920, with the final dissolution of the company, business papers are in the names of William Banning or Hancock Banning individually.

Subject matter in the collection includes: land in Southern California (Wilmington, San Pedro, Pasadena, Compton, Newport Beach, and Los Angeles), Santa Catalina Island, Railroads (Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, Southern Pacific Railroad, and the California Pacific), Inter-urban lines (Los Angeles Inter-urban and the Pacific Electric), Los Angeles harbor, the petroleum industry, the city of Yuma, Arizona, and Fort Yuma, California.

Persons represented in the collection include: Adelaida Banning, Anne Ophelia Banning, Hancock Banning (1865-1925), Hancock Banning (b. 1892), Joseph Brent Banning, Phineas Banning, William Banning, William L. Banning, Thomas Robert Bard, Joseph Lancaster Brent, Charles Frederick Crocker, F.S. Douty, T.H. Goodman, Winfield Scott Hancock, Eldridge Edwards Hewitt, J.W. Horter, William Gates LeDuc, Hayden McLellan, George Smith Patton (1856-1927), Albert Alexander Polhamus, George Hugh Smith, and Walter Vail. There are also materials in the collection related to the following businesses and organizations: the Central Pacific Railroad Company, Kerckhoff-Cuzner Mill and Lumber Company, Los Angeles and Independece Railroad Company, Los Angeles Trust Company, Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and the Mayor and Common Council of the city of Yuma, Arizona.