Porter Ranch was developed in the 1960s. The family it’s named after came here much earlier. First cousins Benjamin Franklin Porter (1833-1905) and George Keating Porter (1833-1906) were New Englanders: Ben from Vermont, George from Massachusetts. Lured by the Gold Rush, George allegedly set sail for CA in 1849 when he was not yet sixteen. (I’m skeptical, as the 1850 census still had him living with his parents in MA.) He, his brother John, and their cousin Ben had all settled in Soquel, Santa Cruz County, by 1858. There Ben and George ran a tannery that would quickly make them rich. George even served on the CA state senate in 1862-1863; I assume that’s where he got to know preacher-turned-assemblyman Charles Maclay, who in 1874 sought to purchase the northern half of the San Fernando Valley – 56,000 acres – from the de Celis family. The Porters agreed to go in with him on the deal, with George obtaining some 19,000 acres around the Mission area and Ben getting about the same to the west. George sold the bulk of his land in 1903 to some of L.A.’s wealthiest men (see Brand Boulevard). Ben unloaded much of his back in 1887 – it would soon be developed as Chatsworth Park – but a healthy 4,150 acres remained with his grandchildren, the Sesnon siblings, until they sold it to Porter Ranch’s developers in 1962. See Hubbard Street for a little about Ben’s brother-in-law.
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