El Monte

El Monte sits at what was once the western terminus of the Southern Emigrant Trail from Santa Fe. American settlers began arriving in the early eighteen fifties, planting farms along the San Gabriel River and briefly calling the place Lexington before the old Spanish name stuck. By eighteen fifty-eight the Butterfield Overland Mail had established a stagecoach stop here called Monte Station, one link in the chain carrying mail from Missouri to San Francisco in twenty-five days.

During the Civil War, El Monte had a reputation as a Confederate stronghold in Southern California. Years earlier, in eighteen fifty-four, a local militia called the Monte Rangers had formed to defend the frontier. The town incorporated in nineteen twelve, and today at about one hundred nine thousand people it is one of the more densely settled cities in the San Gabriel Valley, though almost nothing remains of the frontier adobe it once was.