Америкалық жылжымайтын мүлік дамытушысы Алонзо Хортонның өмірі мен қызметі

American real estate developer

Alonzo Eratus 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. A story was told that when Alonzo was eight years old and still living in New York he sold a pig for $1. By mistake, the man gave him $2. The next day Horton returned the $1. By coincidence, the two met again years later in Wisconsin, and the purchaser remembered the incident. He told a large group of citizens in Wisconsin. "I would trust Horton with everything I have in the world." 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 by purchasing land warrants from veterans of that war, gained 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 Appleton, Wisconsin. Today, Hortonville is a village with a 2010 population of over 2,700. In 1848 Horton filed his first Warrant in Green Bay, the County seat for Brown County which the area was a part of at that time, for 160 acres of land which is now "Downtown Hortonville". The price per acre at that time was only $.70. But before he could file he had to take an oath that he had seen and inspected the land and that no other settler resided on the land. To do so meant travelling by foot to inspect the land which was almost all dense woods with no trails. Then he had to go back to Green Bay by foot to file and return again. No easy task as the trip was around 40 miles and the area has many streams and rivers that he needed to cross along the way. After this he became a success at trading land, establishing businesses and cattle. 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. Upon visiting there, he noticed that while the small town was built around the old Spanish presidio (fortress) well inland near the mouth of the San Diego River, no large settlements had been made along the large San Diego Bay just a few miles south, even though all ships sailing to the town docked in the bay.

In 1867 Horton sold off his merchandise in San Francisco and journeyed to San Diego. There he bought 960 acres (3.9 km2) of land on San Diego Bay for just 27½ cents an acre ($67.95/km2), Eventually, the California Southern Railroad (now a part of BNSF Railway) became the first line to connect the city with the rest of America's rail network in 1885. But land values crashed in the late 1880s, devastating much of Horton's fortune. By the time he died in 1909, he had lost much of his former wealth.

Horton went down in history as a tireless, enthusiastic supporter of the interests of whatever locality he happened to be living in. Saying after moving to Wisconsin and founding the village of "Hortonville" as one of its first settlers in 1848, "My principle is to be as happy as I can every day, to try and make everyone else as happy as I can, and to try to make no one unhappy." Today, the village of Hortonville Wisconsin honors its founder with "Alonzo park", one of three parks in the small town. Horton died at age 96 in Agnew Sanitarium, San Diego. He is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.

KGB Homegrown IV 1976 album fourth song is Alonzo F. Horton Rag Hunt'n Peck.