Banning: Named for the Stagecoach King

Banning sits where the San Gorgonio Pass narrows to its tightest point, and the town exists because of that bottleneck. The first recorded settler arrived in eighteen fifty-three, and by eighteen sixty-two an adobe stage stop was operating in the pass.

The town takes its name from General Phineas T. Banning, who ran the stagecoach and freight lines connecting Los Angeles and Wilmington with the Arizona territories through this corridor. When the Southern Pacific Railroad punched through the pass in eighteen seventy-six, it confirmed Banning's role as the chokepoint between the coast and the desert interior.

Banning incorporated on February sixth, nineteen thirteen. Today it sits between the wind turbines of the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Resource Area, one of the most productive wind corridors in California, and the same geography that made it a crossroads still defines it.