C. E. Owen, a pioneer of 1849, residing on the corner of Olive and Eureka streets, Redlands, was born in Sheffield, Ohio. March 16, 1840, he left Ohio for California, shipping his horses and wagons to Chicago. At St. Joe, Missouri, he traded his horses for oxen.
He left Iowa Point, May 10, 1849, with a company consisting of 100 wagons, and September 10 of the same year they arrived in the Sacramento valley with eighty-three wagons, under Captain Dorland. Mr. Owen can tell some interesting incidents of the journey across the plains, and of his experiences as a miner in the early days. For several years he engaged in buying and selling cattle and in the butcher business in Placer and Shasta counties. After this he again went to mining. In 1851 he went into the mercantile business at French Gulch, Shasta County, and lost heavily. He then went to the mines. After leaving the mines he followed the cattle business for twenty years, and at the end of that time went to farming in Napa valley, where he remained five years.
In 1873 he came to San Bernardino County and purchased thirty acres of land on Base Line and A streets, which he improved and afterward sold, and purchased twenty-five acres in Redlands. Here he has a most beautiful orange orchard of fourteen acres, which is beginning to yield a handsome income, and here he expects to spend the rest of his days. He has been twice married, but has no children, except an adopted daughter, who is an artist and a teacher in the public schools.
