The Huntington Library is mounting a special exhibition entitled ‘Cultivating California: Founding Families of the San Marino Ranch,’ which will be on view through May 13 in the West Hall of the Library. The exhibition is timed to correspond with the centennial year of the city of San Marino.

With more than seventy-five historical items drawn from The Huntington’s collections and those of the San Marino Historical Society and the Pasadena Museum of History, the exhibition tells the story of the Wilson, Shorb, and Patton families, who helped transform a region of one-time Spanish land grants into an agricultural paradise between the years 1854 and 1904.

“Although it was Henry E. Huntington and several neighboring landowners who worked to incorporate the city of San Marino, in fact the Wilson, Shorb, and Patton families farmed the land and played key roles in the history of the region before Huntington’s arrival in the early 1900s,” says Jennifer Allan Goldman, institutional archivist at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition. Huntington and Patton remained neighbors and friends for more than 20 years and were major influences behind the move to incorporate San Marino as its own jurisdiction in 1913.

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