Los Angeles County
Biographies
JAMES RENWICK MCKINNIE
MCKINNIE, JAMES RENWICK, Realty and Investments, Los Angeles, California, and Colorado Springs, Colo., was born in Harrison County, Ohio, October 8, 1846. He is the son of E. K. McKinnie and Ruhamah (Drummond) McKinnie. He married Anna McCarty, September 20, 1904, at St. Louis, Missouri.
Mr. McKinnie received his education in the schools of his native State, graduating from high school in 1861. He became a teacher in country schools and continued as such until 1863, when he took up arms for the Union. He served in the army from 1863 to the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, and during those two years participated in numerous engagements.
Returning from the battle fields, Mr. McKinnie again became a teacher. He trained the youth of his native State for five years, then deserted the prosaic life of a schoolroom for the more exciting one of a gold hunter.
Mr. McKinnie, who is a representative man of the West, was among the pioneers in the Colorado silver and gold fields. He arrived in that State in 1870 and immediately went in for gold and silver mining in the San Juan country. He was fairly successful there, but did not confine his operations to that district. He prospected in all parts of Colorado, and after nine years had accumulated a considerable fortune. In 1879 he located at Colorado Springs, from where he conducted his mining business.
Even in those days the gold excitement was strong in Colorado, and Mr. McKinnie, with his mining experience, soon became one of the leading men of that section. In 1883 he reorganized the Exchange National Bank of Colorado Springs and was elected its president. He served as president of the bank for ten years, and then, his other interests demanding more of his time, he resigned, being unable to devote as much attention to the business as he thought he should. He was made vice president of the bank, however, and still holds that office.
About the time that Mr. McKinnie became interested in banking he also became an active factor in the real estate business of Colorado Springs and acquired large tracts of land in and around the city, and today has valuable and extensive holdings.
Mr. McKinnie has undertaken some very large development projects, and to him is due many of the marvelous feats of irrigation and reclamation in the United States.
For instance, in 1905 he, with R. P. Davie, began the reclamation of the submerged lands of the Florida Everglades. It was a gigantic undertaking and necessitated not only daring, but great engineering ability. This work was really the greatest piece of development that has taken place in the State of Florida and is one that will always be regarded as a monument to the progressiveness of Springs and the El Paso Club of Colorado Springs, the men who were concerned in it. With Governor Broward as the patron of the work, Mr. McKinnie and Mr. Davie purchased 110,000 acres of swamp land for reclamation purposes, and they then set to work to drain it by means o modern canals. That work is not yet complete, but its successful outcome is assured, for already more than 25,00 acres have been drained and put in cultivation by the Everglades Sugar and Land Company, which was organized by Mr. McKinnie in 1906 and is today one of the most important corporations in Florida.
After this work had been successfully started, Mr. McKinnie and his partner, in 1907, organized the Southwestern Sugar and Land Company and purchased a large tract of land located in the Salt River Valley, Arizona. This land was an arid waste at that time and regarded as unfit for any purpose. Under the hands of these masterful developers, however, the land has been thoroughly irrigated, and where once there was naught but desert there are today widespreading fields of wheat, sugar beets and alfalfa, all of which are produced in great quantities, the crops each year growing larger.
This work, in its way, was quite as monumental a task as that in Florida, and its accomplishment placed Mr. McKinnie in the forefront of Western developers. He was the pioneer in beet-sugar growing in Colorado and Kansas and built the first beet-sugar factories in those States.
Mr. McKinnie also has heavy land interests in Southern California, and in order to be near them built a home in Los Angeles three years ago. He now spends part of his time there each year, managing his properties in that section of the country. He maintains headquarters in Colorado Springs, however, and there transacts most of his business.
In addition to his land projects, Mr. McKinnie has also gone in for oil, and in it, like everything else he has taken hold of, has scored a success. His oil holdings are in the California fields and his wells are among the best in that State. He operates under the name of the Palmer Annex Oil Company, of which he is secretary and treasurer.
His principal interests and his positions in each are as follows: Southwestern Sugar and Land Company, president; Everglades Sugar and Land Company, president; Sheridan (Wyoming) Land and Irrigation Company, president; Western States Securities Company, president; Grand Junction Tow and Development Company, president; Western Sugar and Land Company, vice president; U. S. Sugar and Land Company, director.
Mr. McKinnie, besides being prominent as one of the big business men of the West, is a well-known clubman and lodge member. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and takes a leading part in the affairs of the veterans. He is an Elk, and holds memberships in the following clubs: Colorado Springs Country Club, Denver Club of Denver, Pike’s Peak Club of Colorado.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 745,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Joyce
Rugeroni.
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