How Did Elsmere Canyon Get Its Name?

The first use of "Elsmere" Canyon that I could find was in an 1896 publication (Oil and Gas Yielding Formations of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara Counties - Bulletin No. 11 of the California State Mining Bureau). I also found a description of an unnamed Elsmere Canyon in an 1888 publication (California State Mining Bureau 8th Annual Report of the State Mineralogist for the year ending 1888). Based on this, I believed that Elsmere Canyon was named between 1888 and 1896.

The following is a condensed and somewhat clarified version of an article written by Jerry Reynolds for the Daily Signal newspaper on August 29, 1993. Reynolds was at that time the curator of the Santa Clarita Historical Society. (With thanks to Pat Saletore of the Santa Clarita Historical Society for providing me with this newspaper article and other information about Elsmere Canyon.)

Henry Clay Needham

In 1887 John St. John, the governor of Kansas, contracted with Jesse Yarnell of Los Angeles and George B. Katzenstein of Sacramento to purchase a tract of land for a proposed "dry colony." St. John was a nationally known leader of the Prohibition Party who had drafted, along with Henry Clay Needham, the Kansas Dry Laws. At the time, Newhall Land and Farming Co. was going through one of its periodic cash flow problems, so it agreed to sell 10,000 acres to the Prohibitionists. This became know as the St. John Subdivision. On October 12, 1887, Henry Clay Needham and his wife arrived in Newhall acting as the personal emissaries of Governor St. John. They stayed at the old Lyon Station complex (now Eternal Valley Cemetery). Sales at the St. John Subdivision were slow, partly due to a depression, but probably more so because of a clause in the deed reading "... no wines or alcoholic liquors shall be sold, offered for sale, or kept on the devised premises."

One person who could live with that was Ed Lingwood. In 1889 he, his wife Mary Booth, and his daughter Ollie, settled the upper reaches of what was to become Elsmere Canyon. He worked as a section foreman for Southern Pacific Railroad. Lingwood was born in Port Ellesmere, England, on January 4, 1857, immigrating to Kansas with his family at the age of 12. There, he married an Ohio girl in 1879, became associated with the Prohibitionists and was more than likely enticed to the Newhall area by Needham.

Lingwood called his property Ellesmere Ranch, probably naming it for the founder of his hometown, Sir Thomas Egerton, First Viscount Brackley, Baron Ellesmere, who lived from 1540 to 1617. Ellesmere Island in Canada and Lake Ellesmere, New Zealand, were also named in honor of the Viscount. It is also suggested that Lingwood had Sir Edward Inglefield, First Earl Ellesmere in mind. More than likely Elsmere Canyon is named for Viscount Brackley.

I cannot confirm this story because Reynolds did not provide any sources. In another article, Reynolds writes that "it is said that the wide branching oaks and park-like setting ...reminded Ed Lingwood of his birthplace, so he named his ranch Ellesmere, which gradually became Elsmere." That makes two conflicting accounts of the naming of Elsmere by Reynolds. Both of them do not have a source, although I suspect that he got his information from A. B. Perkins.

However, I find it hard to believe Reynold's story. First (see the below genealogy), Lingwood apparently wasn't born in Ellesmere Port (the correct name - not Port Ellesmere). Second, and more damaging to the story, Lingwood had a homestead claim patented in Placerita Canyon filed at the end of 1903. Therefore, I do not know how Elsmere Canyon got its name.