Milton Thomas (1831-1894) was a nurseryman who in 1874 cofounded the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Co-operative Association, which wasn’t really about immigration but was definitely about land: buying it, then building upon it. In 1875, this syndicate set up the towns of Pomona (hence Thomas Street) and Artesia. Milton Thomas was an Ohio boy who moved to Des Moines in the 1840s. He married Elizabeth Ellen Archer (1834-1926) there in 1853, they wagoned out to Stockton, CA in the 1860s, and settled in Los Angeles by 1870. There Thomas would grow and sell hundreds of acres of citrus and walnut – both the trees and the land. He and Elizabeth, who resided on Jefferson Boulevard near Main Street in L.A., had two daughters: Mary, a teacher, died two years before her father, at the tender age of 33; Laura died in 1912. Elizabeth, who outlived them all, was the original honoree of Pomona’s Main Street.
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