Downey Avenue and the city of Downey are named for John Gately Downey (1827-1894), governor of California from 1860 to 1862. This is no mere tribute: Downey himself owned this land. A lad from County Roscommon, Ireland, Downey sailed to the U.S. in 1842 and became a pharmacist. He caught gold fever in 1849 and went to Northern California, but soon gave up and opened a drugstore in Los Angeles with James P. McFarland. L.A. was a small town back then, and the ambitious Downey quickly joined the ranks of the local elite – lending money, buying up land, and embarking upon a political career that would take him to the governor’s office. (He was CA’s only foreign-born governor until Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.) In 1871, Downey founded the all-powerful Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles with Isaias W. Hellman. Along with partner Ozro W. Childs, they donated the land for the USC campus at the end of that decade. As for the city of Downey, it started in 1859 when Downey and his old buddy McFarland bought Rancho Santa Gertrudes after its previous owner Lemuel Carpenter committed suicide – because of his debts to Downey! They established a town there in 1873. Ten years later, John Downey and his first wife Maria (née Guirado) were victims of a terrible train wreck in the Tehachapi Mountains. Maria was killed; John survived but was traumatized for the rest of his life.
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