Man Banning is Named After is Back in Town in Time for Phineas Lights Festival

The man the City of Banning is named for made a return Thursday - in bust form - in time for the Christmas festival that also bears his name.

Phineas Banning was a 19th century California businessman and entrepreneur known to historians as "the Father of the Port of Los Angeles."

The fiberglass bust of Banning, cast from a mold which was created in Redwood City by a sculptor working from an 1855 photo, arrived outside Super Subs on San Gorgonio Avenue seatbelted in the passenger seat of 50-year Pass resident Mike Rose's compact car.

"I went to the Phineas Festival last year, I said so where's Phineas?" Rose said inside Super Subs. "They said 'What are you talking about?' It's a Phineas Festival. Where's Phineas? They go, 'We don't have a Phineas.'"

Rose said he worked with the Banning Cultural Alliance to come up with an answer.

"Why don't you have a Phineas?" Rose asked again. "The town's named after Phineas. So we commissioned one."

Rose, of Banning, is a counselor counselor at Mt. San Jacinto College.

"They named the festival for him," Rose said. "It's a cute name. But I'm a historian so I was asking, 'Where's Phineas?'"

Rose said Redwood City artist Rob Brown created the three-dimensional bust - head, shoulders and chest - from a photo dated 1855. Phineas Banning would have been about 25 years old at the time of the photo.

"We're going to have three of them," Rose said. "This is the first one. We're going to have two fiberglass ones that we'll have around town, so everyone can see him. And we're going to have one bronze, that will wind up probably in City Hall."

Rose said he wasn't sure how much the Phineas busts will cost. But he was pleased to bring the first fiberglass version to town.

According to historians, Phineas Banning lived from 1830 to 1885. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the seventh of 11 children. He worked for a time at a brother's law firm in the port city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, then at the dockyards.

At age 20, he decided to work on a ship to pay his passage to California, and he arrived in San Pedro in 1851, according to historians. He worked as a store clerk and a stagecoach driver to Pueblo de Los Angeles, then a town of less than 2,000 residents, 20 miles to the north.

Phineas Banning got himself elected to the Los Angeles Common Council for a year. Then he started his own staging and shipping company, and by the 1860s he had wagons headed as far as the Mormon settlement in San Bernardino, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Yuma, Arizona, according to historians.

Banning also operated a stagecoach line through the San Gorgonio Pass to Yuma. That is how the Pass, and the City of Banning, first became associated with his name.

Phineas Banning then turned his attention to expanding the harbor and docks at San Pedro, as well as connections to the growing business community in Los Angeles. His drive and ambition helped him eventually become known as "the Father of the Port of Los Angeles."

During the Civil War, Banning portrayed himself as a staunch Unionist, according to historians. After the war, the federal government presented Banning with a purely honorary title, "Brigadier General of the California First Brigade."

The title had no basis on military service, but Banning insisted on being referred to as "General Banning" for the rest of his life, according to historians.

Phineas Banning may have passed through what is today known as the City of Banning, and he may have traveled through the San Gorgonio Pass frequently. But it is not clear from historic records whether he ever lived in the Pass.

He died at age 55 in San Francisco, in March 1885. The Los Angeles Times obituary went on the front page, headlined "Gen. Phineas Banning - Death of a Pioneer of Los Angeles County."

The City of Banning incorporated in 1913.

This year's Phineas Festival of Lights is scheduled 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday Dec. 1 in downtown Banning. For a photo gallery from last year's festival click here.

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