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Lyon Station Built

at Eternal Valley Site

As traffic increas d between Los Angeles and the North and the necessity
arose for staging connections at convenient locations, Henry C. Wiley and
Jose Ygnacio del Valle established the first depot which became Lyon Station
when acquired by the Lyon brothers in 1855. Lyon Station consisted of a well
constructed frame building, which housed a store, post office, depot and
tavern. There was also a large stable and a cottage half-hidden in the moun-
tain oak.

J. H. Whitney, for whom Whitney Canyon was named, buried his three
THE FI RST HOUSE children in th cemetery one by one as they fell victims of the dread diph-
theria plague. Willie, the first child of this early day homesteader and his wife,
died just before his sixth birthday in 1881. Then followed the tragic deaths of
AT
their daughters, Nettie at the age of eight, in 1884 and Mabel 10, in 1888.
Visitors can still read the tender eulogy on the children's gravestones:
LYON STATION
"Beneath this stone in soft repose,
I laid a Mother's dearest pride ...
A flower that scarce had waked to life
Close by was started the first burial ground; the exact site where Eternal And light and beauty' ere it died."
Valley Memorial Park is being developed today. One section of the century- The Whitney's moved away to become one of the first families to purchase
old family cemetery is called "The Garden of the Pioneers" in honor of the property on Signal Hill in Long Beach.
famous men who are buried there. Not all of the early graves are clearly
Cyrus Lyon was typical of the reckless breed of men that built the West.
marked, but all of them have been preserved, a silent memorial to the first
Prominent among the Rangers - the only law enforcement body existing, he
settlers, who hallowed this ground and passed a sacred heritage on to future was not afraid of anybody or anything. Sanford Lyon was definitely the
generations. Pioneer of Pioneers. He was a typical advance scout for the Eastern civiliza-
The gravestones that are still recognizable after almost a century bear tion to come. More conservative than his brother, he was a stable man who
the names of many well-known pioneer families who were prominent in the thrived on hard work; dealing in live stock, mining and other sidelines that
struggle to forge a civilization out of the primitive West. J. A. Swall, a rugged offered him a profitable return.
harvester, was buried there. Sanford Lyon, who founded the first American
settlement in the area, and his son Frank, who died as a child, are both buried Oil Discovery Brings Changes
in "The Garden of the Pioneers."

Reading like a "Who's Who" of Southern California's early history, the Through Francisco Lopez, pioneers W. W. Jenkins, H. C. Wil~y and
famous family names of Rivera, King, Stahl, Parish, Varner, Tibbetts, Aiken, Sanford Lyon learned of the Pico Canyon oil seepages, and in 1869 Lyon
Nelson, Overend, Quayle, Renne, Derrick, Barkis, Heinly, Lockard and "spring poled" a 250-foot well in the Canyon good for ten barrels of oil a day.
Strecher are also among those on the markers in "The Garden of the Pioneers." This was the first successful commercial oil well in the West.

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