Named in 1924 by Cyrus Sanford Jr. (c. 1872-1942) on a tract he co-owned with K.M. & Lulu Erem and Earl A. McDonald. This land had been in the Sanford family – a Kentucky clan who came to California by way of Missouri – since the 1850s, when part of Rancho La Ballona was acquired by Cyrus’s uncle William T.B. Sanford, an associate of Wilmington founder Phineas Banning. (In fact Banning was married to William’s sister Rebecca: see Wilmington’s Sanford Avenue about the cursed Sanford siblings.) Cyrus was born on the family ranch and lived there until at least 1900. That’s when he married one Minnie Bannister and began working as a ranch hand around the county. It was not a happy union: Cyrus divorced Minnie in 1908, claiming that she stalked him at work, cheated on him, and bathed their children in gasoline(!). He got custody of their two sons; she their infant daughter. In 1927, during a lawsuit with McDonald and the Erems, Cyrus Sanford falsely claimed insanity in order to void their 1924 agreement for this land. The judge didn’t buy it.
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