Mandeville Canyon’s namesake wasn’t actually named Mandeville. Guy C. Manville (1839-1905) raised bees here in the 1870s-1880s, and his canyon was variously spelled “Manville”, “Manvill”, “Manvel”, and “Mandeville”. (The earliest mention I could find was in 1878: an article in the Los Angeles Daily Star wrote it as “Monvilles’ cañon”. As it correctly identified its resident apiarist as G.C. Manville, we know it’s the same person.) Originally from Illinois, Guy Manville was a lieutenant in the Colorado cavalry in the Civil War. Sometime after 1870, he came out here with his wife Frances and their eight children. In 1891, Manville testified to the poor quality of his canyon’s water, which was meant to be tapped for “Soldiers’ Home” (now the VA campus) near Sawtelle. He had by then given up on beekeeping and was living near USC, but he moved back to the Westside in 1898 when he himself became a resident of Soldiers’ Home.
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