Charles Lux
Charles Lux was a businessman-rancher and one of the largest landowners in California.
Biography
Lux was born to Nicolas Lux and Marie Anne in the commune of Hatten, in Alsace on the Rhine between Strasbourg and Karlsruhe. While yet a boy, he emigrated to New York City, where he found employment as a delivery boy for a retail butcher in Fulton Market. He eventually became a butchers' helper, making six dollars per month.He left New York for San Francisco in 1849; by 1853 he had opened his own S.F. retail butcher shop at 931 Washington Street. In 1856, he bought 1,500 acres of land south of San Bruno Mountain from the children of Jose Antonio Sanchez, on which he established both a feedlot to supply his business and a large home which he named Baden after the grand duchy across the Rhine from his birthplace. The Baden development was serviced by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad when it ran its lines south of San Francisco in 1863, and later formed a nucleus of the city of South San Francisco.
The success of the wholesale feedlot enterprise soon overshadowed his retail business, and Lux soon became interested in acquiring that business' suppliers. Much of California's best farming and ranching lands was entitled by Spanish and Mexican land-grants, particularly the 800+ grants signed by Mexican Governor Pio Pico in 1846. At the same time, the Panic of 1857 and President Buchanan's monetary remedies deprived the Western states of capital for investment San Francisco, however, continued growing - financed by the gold-mining industry and the silver from the Comstock Lode. Growth and financial surfeit meant that the Lux businesses were cash-rich at a time when many hopeful ranchers lacked access to credit in turn, this enabled Lux to begin buying large tracts from California land-grants.
Miller & Lux
In 1862, Lux formed a partnership with fellow-butcher Henry Miller under the name of Miller & Lux. Beginning as cattle dealers and wholesale butchers, the firm continued to invest in ranching properties, at one point owning more than 2,200 square miles of Western land. Eventually, their expanding cattle empire collided with the interests of land-developers; in 1879 this led to the historic Lux v. Haggin water-rights case.In 1870, Lux moved to South Park in downtown Los Angeles, from which he supervised many of the activities of Miller & Lux, although he often visited his Baden estate.