Monrovia Canyon Park - Rankins Children Gravesite

|Home |Park Trails Map |Grave Stones |History |Self-Guided Nature Trail |Park Entrance |Sawpit Road |Cabin |Nature Center |Falls Trail Junction |Monrovia Falls |Wildlife |

Signpost at Emerson's Flat Picnic Area marking the short trail leading to the Rankins children's gravesite.

|Top of Page |Home |Park Trails Map |History |Self-Guided Nature Trail |Park Entrance |Sawpit Road |Cabin |Nature Center |Falls Trail Junction |Monrovia Falls |Wildlife |

The Gravesite of the three Rankins children who died of Typhoid Fever in 1877.

Originally, this triple-gravestone rested in the slot in the granite stone seen above the gravestone. The bodies of the three children are no longer interred at this site.
Click here for the tragic history of the Rankins Family

|Top of Page |Home |Park Trails Map |Grave Stones |Self-Guided Nature Trail |Park Entrance |Sawpit Road |Cabin |Nature Center |Falls Trail Junction |Monrovia Falls |Wildlife |

The pioneer settlers of Monrovia Canyon were Hibbard Rankins, his wife Polly and their four children, who arrived in 1874. The Rankins family, having journeyed from Wisconsin to California, built a little cabin in the lower canyon, planted vegetables and fruit orchard, and cut wood in the old sawpit after which Sawpit Canyon is named. It was this latter enterprise that provided the close-knit fmily with its main livelihood. They hauled the wood to Los Angeles and sold it there, the round trip by wagon taking two days. They kept bees and sold honey as an additional source of income. The Rankins children attended school in Duarte and walked the entire distance from their canyon home to school and back every day, remembered a Duarte oldtimer. Tragedy - one of the saddest episodes in the long saga of the San Gabriel Mountains - struck the Rankins family in 1877. The oldest child, Albert, age 19, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in San Gabriel and somehow he contracted typhoid fever. He died after a short illness on March 6. While the family was still mourning, both girls, Estella, age 13, and Polly, age 16, came down with the dreaded disease. They died within a week of each other, on April 19 and 25. Heartbroken, their lives shattered, Mr. and Mrs. Rankins buried their three children on a little rise above their cabin and marked the grave with a triple tombstone that included the children's names, ages and dates of death engraved in marble. The bereaved parents and their sole surviving child, Ernest, then returned to Wisconsin. Years later, Ernest Rankins returned to the scene of his family's tragedy and removed his brother and sister's remains to a cemetery in Monrovia. Still later, they were again removed and taken to their final resting place, Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena.    from "The San Gabriels" by John W. Robinson, p. 32

|Top of Page |Home |Park Trails Map |Grave Stones |Self-Guided Nature Trail |Park Entrance |Sawpit Road |Cabin |Nature Center |Falls Trail Junction |Monrovia Falls |Wildlife |