I was going through some of my Victorville notes and came across an amazing, untold story that I never had the chance to write up. It is about California’s Miller family, an aristocratic clan that’s been extracting rent from California taxpayers for the past 150 years, ever since their patriarch started looting land back in the 19th century.
It all began with Henry Miller, the “Cattle King of California,” who once had the honor of being the largest landowner in the United States. The man had so much land that he liked to brag about being able to drive his cattle from Los Angeles to San Francisco without ever leaving his own property.
“Henry Miller left behind him the largest area of land under a single ownership ever assembled in America, probably the world, if private individual ownership and now the feudal domains of Kings is alone considered. … Eight hundred thousand acres in California—more than 1,250 square miles—nearly as much in Oregon and half as much in Nevada, constituting the entire holdings of Miller & Lux, Inc,” gushed the New York Times in a 1921 profile of Miller’s disintegrating empire, 5 years after his death. (more…)
May 19th, 2011 | Comments (15)
