386 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



Glen, and saw the decayed old stumps and logs which still remain as relics 

 of Joe Chapman's prisonership there, one of the stumps measuring 3 feet 

 and 8 inches in diameter. She was the first woman who ever trod that wild 

 historic spot, or viewed those lofty Grand Canyon and Alpine Falls. 



GiDDiNGS Trail Canyon. — This is the first branch or tributary of 

 Millard canyon ; and the Giddings trail follows up its southeast wall to the 

 summit ridge, which was in 1886 flagged, staked, and claimed for name as 

 " Giddings Peak." [See article " Giddings Trail."] This canyon starts at 

 ' ' Grizzly Point ' ' of the Mount L^owe literature and drops rapidly down 

 southwesterly into Millard canyon. The upper trolley section of the 

 Mount IvOwe Electric Railroad crosses the heading of I^as Flores canyon 

 first and this Giddings Trail canyon next. [See article, " Giddings Peak.' '] 



Negro Canyon. — This is a comparatively small but bountiful water- 

 bearing canyon, opening southwestward into the Arroyo Seco, and which 

 took its name from a colored man named Robert Owen, who got out wood 

 from there in the early sixties. The Centennial History of L,os Angeles 

 County, p. 44, says of him : 



" Robert Owen, familiarly called by Americans 'Uncle Bob,' came from 

 Texas in December, 1853, with ' Aunt Winnie, ' his wife, two daughters, 

 and son, Charley Owen. They survive him. He was a shrewd man of 

 business, energetic and honorable in his dealings ; made money by govern- 

 ment contracts and general trade. He died, well esteemed by white and 

 colored, August 18, 1865, aged fifty-nine years." 



This canyon was government land, beyond the bounds of any land 

 claimed by anybody else. Uncle Bob had secured a contract to supply fuel 

 to the United States officers and soldiers at Los Angeles, and here is where 

 he chopped down trees for that fire-wood supply. Instead of spending his 

 money getting drunk and gambling, as others did, he saved it and bought 

 up cheap vacant land at lyos Angeles, which became highly valuable as the 

 city spread over it, and made him the richest colored man ever known in 

 the county. The first religious services ever held in Los Angeles county by 

 colored people were at his house, in 1854. His property was on San Pedro 

 street and new Los Angeles street. "Uncle Bob" was a slave in Texas 

 and hired his time, saved money, and bought his own freedom ; then kept 

 on and sent money back to buy his wife and three children. [Two grand- 

 sons of this man own the Owens block on Broadway near Third street, Los 

 Angeles, and other valuable properties.] The water supply for the Las 

 Casitas settlement is piped down from Negro canyon. The mountain trail 

 which two sons of the historic "old John Brown," who gave his life for the 

 Negro race, commenced to build from Las Casitas to Brown's peak, ran 

 partly in this same " Negro canyon." 



Deadman's Canyon. — This is another small branch of the Arroyo 

 Seco, next north of Negro canyon. In 1873 ^ very old Indian lived in a 



