Alonzo Horton
| Alonzo Horton | |
|---|---|
Horton in 1867
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| Born |
Alonzo Erastus Horton October 24, 1813 Union, Connecticut |
| Died | 7 January 1909 (aged 95) San Diego, California |
| Nationality | American |
Alonzo Erastus Horton (October 24, 1813 – January 7, 1909) was an American real estate developer in the nineteenth century. The Horton Plaza mall in downtown San Diego is named for him.
Horton was born 1813 in Union, Connecticut, the scion of an old New England family, and grew up in Onondaga County, New York. By his 20s he had developed a keen entrepreneurial spirit, and in 1834, when he was 21, he began transporting grain by boat from the Lake Ontario port of Oswego, New York, to Canada. He also taught school there, and in 1834 ran for constable on the Whig ticket. But having developed a cough, and with his family and friends fearing tuberculosis, he was advised to move to the West. At that time, the Western frontier was Wisconsin, and in 1836 he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There he became a success at trading land and cattle.
In 1847, after the American success in the Mexican-American War, Horton traveled to St. Louis, Missouri then the gateway to the Western frontier, and purchased 1,500 acres (6 km²) of land in the rural wilderness of northern Wisconsin. In 1848 he filed the first warrant for what would become the village of Hortonville, Wisconsin, in Outagamie County near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Today, Hortonville is a village with a 2010 population of over 2,700.
In 1851, with his town a success, Horton decided to join many in seeking his fortune in the gold fields of California. He sold his interests for $7,000, and traveled to El Dorado County, California, the heart of the Mother Lode. However, he became a success yet again not so much through gold, but through trading ice in the mining towns. In 1857, he returned to Wisconsin via Panama. During an Indian attack, he lost a bag of gold dust worth $10,000, but kept the money he had made trading ice.
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