Irish Stowaway Helped Shape State, Nation

He was an Irish immigrant who saved Los Angeles, California and, just maybe, the country itself. Along the way, he found time to create three institutions that decisively shaped L.A.’s future: its first bank, mall and suburb.

Yet today John Gately Downey--a pharmacist-turned-governor-turned real estate mogul--is probably best remembered, if at all, for lending his name to a bedroom community southeast of downtown.

Born in Ireland in 1827, Downey immigrated just prior to the great potato famine, as a teenage stowaway on a cattle ship heading for America. In Maryland, Downey’s knowledge of Latin helped win him an apprenticeship with Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who would later go down in history as the physician who set the broken leg of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

In 1849, Downey abandoned his work as a pharmacist to try his luck in the California gold fields, where he arrived with a $10 grubstake. But the only gold he ever touched was on the watch he brought with him. So, in 1850, he set out for Los Angeles, intent on resuming his former occupation.

That year Downey opened the tiny pueblo’s first drugstore with his partner, James P. McFarland. The one-story adobe shack turned out to be the gold mine that previously had eluded Downey, who enhanced his fortune by allowing his credit customers to convert their drug debt into high-interest mortgages. He then foreclosed on those not able to meet his steep payment schedule.

“He liked the sound of coins falling on his counters better than a Mass,” said one victim of his money lending.

After winning election to the City Council in 1852, Downey married 15-year-old Maria Guirado. It was a genuine love match, and he later built his bride the city’s first two-story brick mansion with a private ballroom on Main Street, between 3rd and 4th streets.

In 1859, after a brief stint in the Legislature, Downey acquired the 17,600-acre Santa Gertrudes ranch by foreclosing on a $5,000 mortgage, which had originated as a $50 Christmas loan. The unfortunate debtor, Lemuel Carpenter, committed suicide and his ranch ultimately became the site of the city of Downey.

One year later, the 32-year-old immigrant was elected lieutenant governor as the second man on a pro-Southern, Democratic ticket. Within a few turbulent days, Downey was appointed the state’s youngest governor after the elected chief executive, Milton S. Latham, resigned to take a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Latham had vowed to take California out of the Union if Abraham Lincoln was elected president. But Downey defied the voters who had elected his ticket and kept the state and the gold that helped finance Civil War victory on the Union side.

He also vetoed a Latham-sponsored measure to split California into two states. Enforcing his decision to remain in the Union, he raised five regiments of infantry and six companies of cavalry in answer to Lincoln’s call.

Out of office two years later, Downey returned to Los Angeles, where he helped start the town’s first bank. Drawing the pueblo’s scattered retail establishments into one location, Downey built a two-story, block-long building at Main and Temple streets.

Land rich, he would later jointly (with a Protestant and Jew) donate the land for Southern California’s Methodist college, which would become USC. In 1873, he laid out the city’s first suburb, Lincoln Heights.

By 1876, after a hard-fought bargain in which the Southern Pacific Railroad demanded $600,000 and control of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, which Downey had helped to build, Downey negotiated completion of the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco rail route.

It was a moment of success for Downey, whose hard bargaining kept the railroad from adopting a shortcut through the Cajon Pass that would have bypassed L.A. and sealed its economic doom.

Downey’s romance with the railroad, deeply rooted in the role he played in bringing it to L.A., was not shared by his wife. Fearing the iron horses’ speed, she preferred to travel by ship.

Convinced that just one train trip would end her phobia, Downey escorted his nervous wife, against her wishes, aboard the Southern Pacific headed for San Francisco. It was a decision he would regret for the rest of his life.

On Jan. 19, 1883, they completed their business and set out for home aboard the ill-fated Southern Pacific train No. 19. As they started the 22-hour journey, Downey’s wife began to relax, swaying to the clickety-clack of the wheels and the sound of steam whooshing from air brakes. The seven-car train was highballing it down the track at about 60 mph.

In Bakersfield, just before beginning the climb over the Tehachapi Mountains, a “helper” engine was added. Midnight had come and gone as the little train reached the summit and stopped on an incline.

As the Downeys slumbered soundly in one of the two sleeping cars, the front brakeman disconnected both engines. While one engine was refueled, the other went to the turntable to be turned around for the descent.

The conductor shuffled into the depot to sign the register and pick up a new schedule. But when the rear brakeman started to return to the train after escorting a lady into the station, the wind blew out the flame in his lantern. In the few seconds it took for him to relight the lantern inside the depot, the train had disappeared.

Standing on the platform of the smoking car was a retired railroad man, who suddenly felt the train begin to move. Frantically, he ran through the cars yelling for help. Aided by another passenger, they applied the frozen brakes, detaching and stopping two of the seven cars about two miles south of the depot.

Rounding a curve at 70 mph, the other five out-of-control cars leaped the tracks, slammed into rocks and then plunged down the 75-foot hillside. Flames, sparked by overturned potbellied stoves, were clearly visible from the Tehachapi depot, four miles away.

Following the red glare, several passengers from the two surviving cars ran to the wreckage. While two men braved the spreading fire and smoke, pulling Downey to safety, others tried unsuccessfully to rescue his wife, who was pinned beneath the wreckage. Other survivors scrambled out through windows while cries for help went unanswered as the fire, aided by tremendous winds, engulfed the cars.

The conductor and rear brakeman were arrested and charged with manslaughter for neglecting the train and not setting the emergency hand brakes. Later, investigators found a leak in the air brakes and neither man was ever tried.

Downey never recovered from that night. His subsequent years were a downward spiral of despair and alcohol, and he died in 1894.