Gabriel, California. He came into possession of adjoining Rancho San Pascual (present day Pasadena) through a series of complicated land deals, which began with his lending money to the Rancho's owner Manuel Garfias in 1859. In 1863 Wilson and Dr. John Strother Griffin, who had also lent Garfias money – and with whom Wilson undertook many business deals in early Los Angeles, including railways, oil exploration, real estate, farming and ranching – bought the entire rancho property outright, and diverted water from the Arroyo Seco up to the dry mesa via an aqueduct called the "Wilson Ditch." In 1864 Wilson took the first expedition to a high peak of the San Gabriel Mountains, which was later named Mount Wilson. He hoped to harvest timber there for the making of wine vats, but he found the wood inadequate. The Wilson Trail became a popular one or two-day hike to the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains by local residents for years to come. In 1873, Wilson and Griffin subdivided their land (with Griffin getting almost of the property, but Wilson retaining some better landeast of current Fair Oaks Avenue, near his Lake Vineyard property). Griffin then sold 2,500 acres (10 km) of his property to the "Indiana Colony," represented by Daniel M. Berry. In 1876, after the Colony had sold most of its allotted land and established what became the City of Pasadena, Wilson began subdividing and developing his adjacent landholdings which became the eastern side of the new settlement. Legacy He gave several acres of property to his son-in-law James de Barth Shorb which he named San Marino, and developed other parts of the land as Alhambra, where he is enshrined as a statue in Renaissance Plaza. Wilson's first wife died in 1849, after which time he married the widow Margaret Hereford. They had four children, of whom one daughter Ruth married George Smith Patton and had a son who became the World War II General George S. Patton Jr. The Pattons later purchased Lake Vineyard. Wilson died at the ranch in 1878 and was buried in San Gabriel Cemetery. The last of his land holdings in the downtown Pasadena area were bequeathed to Central School on South Fair Oaks Avenue. Mount Wilson, a metromedia center (television and radio transmission towers) for the greater Los Angeles area, is the most famous monument to Benjamin Wilson. Wilson Avenue in Pasadena and