Canyon Name Origins – Pickens Canyon, Benjamin Briggs

In this column, I’m straying from my original intention to reveal the origin of the names of the canyons on the San Gabriel Mountains side of the valley. I already told you about Theodor Pickens, for whom Pickens Canyon is named. But I can’t let the influence of Benjamin Briggs go unnoted.

Theodor Pickens settled along the canyon that now bears his name for only 11 years. Benjamin Briggs was the next to live on that land along Pickens Canyon, and also lived there for only 11 years. In Pickens’ time there, he achieved little other than just living his solitary life. But during Briggs’ 11 years there, he created the community we enjoy today. He named our valley, laid out the streets, planted trees, started a school, attracted prosperous settlers and pioneered the founding industry of our valley, sanitariums for the treatment of lung disease. He was an energetic and ambitious man.

To briefly sum up Briggs’ life before La Crescenta, he came west with his seven brothers as a ’49er. The brothers did well, but one brother, George, invested in fruit orchards, becoming one of the first American millionaires in California.

Benjamin soon returned east, married and had a daughter. Sadly, his new wife Irene contracted tuberculosis. The only treatment then for TB was living in a better climate, so the family moved to Santa Paula to work for brother George in his massive fruit orchards there.

Irene died in Santa Paula, and her death defined the rest of Benjamin’s life. He dedicated himself to medicine, earning medical degrees in Europe and the U.S. He was a successful doctor in Indiana, and married again, this time to his previous wife’s sister. It can be deduced that Dr. Briggs also contracted TB, and again searched for a better climate for his health. In 1882, he settled on a valley then known as La Cañada Valley. Initially he bought Theodor Pickens’ land high up on the flanks of the mountains, on the edge of Pickens Canyon, an area we know today as Briggs Terrace.

In partnership with his family he purchased the western half of the Cañada Valley below the terrace. He named it the Crescenta Valley, for the crescent shapes of the Verdugo and San Rafael Mountains as viewed from his lofty home.

There was a land boom going on in Southern California then, so Briggs developed his Crescenta Valley into 10-acre parcels. The sale of the lots were targeted at health seekers, but Briggs also sold to the members of his large extended family, along with his many wealthy and educated friends from Indiana. Briggs did well, building a community to be proud of. He was educated, optimistic and ambitious, and with those traits, set the tone for the community we enjoy today. Dr. Briggs died of his tuberculosis in 1893. His time on Pickens Canyon was short, but had an impact that still influences us.

In honor of Dr. Briggs, and of Thanksgiving, here is an edited account from Dr. Briggs’ wife of Thanksgiving dinner in 1888, right here in La Crescenta. The dinner was held at the elegant La Crescenta Hotel on the corner of Foothill and Rosemont. I found it in Jo Anne Sadler’s fine book, “Crescenta Valley Pioneers,” from which much of my info comes.

“About 50 persons set down in its well-furnished dining room and feasted on oyster soup, turkey and cranberry, chicken pie, olives, roast pork, celery with green peas, potatoes, radishes, pumpkin pie, cake, apples, grapes, and oranges – all the essentials of an old-fashioned New England dinner with the luxuries of our semi-tropical sunshine. The whole house was filled with the perfume of roses, heliotrope, and other flowers, with which it was lavishly adorned. Many of the guests rode up from Glendale in Grey’s hack, returning after dinner. Others, the larger part, spent the night, to see the sunrise on the mountain, and the fog lie over the city. The merry games of the evening when all gathered into the parlor, with sweet voices blending in song, made it the fitting ending to an ideal Thanksgiving Day.”

  mike lawler