The Brief

A short hike that starts at an unmarked entrance to Altadena's foothills ends at the gravesite of the son of one of the Civil War era's most celebrated heroes.

The grave of Owen Brown, who like his father John Brown struggled all his life to end slavery, was named an L.A. County landmark this month. The path that led to that moment was as long and winding as the California history that brought the son of a famous abolitionist to the hills of Los Angeles.

Owen Brown was the son of famous abolitionist John Brown. He participated in the Harpers Ferry raid.

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Altadena Heritage

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Owen Brown's journey to Altadena

Owen Brown's father, John, was a white radical abolitionist who dedicated his life to the destruction of slavery. He led a raid at Harpers Ferry with the goal of igniting a revolt against slavery — and he was executed for treason.

Most people know that part of the story well. What happened after, not so much. Owen, around 35 at the time, escaped Harpers Ferry and lived to see the end of the Civil War. After years on the run, he settled in Southern California.

Owen and his brother made a home in the Altadena foothills and dedicated their lives to homesteading. When he died in 1889, Owen Brown was a local hero. Reports say 2,000 people came to his funeral.

2,000 people gathered for Owen Brown's funeral in Pasadena in 1889.

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Altadena Heritage

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"It is quite remarkable that there should have been found in Pasadena so many men who were associated with John Brown in his mighty work, which up-heaved the nation and made the entering wedge for the overthrow of slavery," a local newspaper reported at the time.

The path to Owen Brown's resting place

The trail to Owen Brown's grave is itself thick with American history. The drive to the trailhead weaves through Altadena's historic Meadows neighborhood, which became a home for middle class Black families in the 1960s and '70s, when much of Los Angeles was segregated.

From the trail, hikers overlook El Prieto Canyon, once the home of Robert Owens, a formerly enslaved Black man who came to Los Angeles in the 1850s after buying his own freedom and built a successful business selling wood to the U.S. Military.

And at the top, the headstone. A hunk of large, misshapen rock sits at the top of a clearing, with stones marking a simple grave. The site overlooks the San Gabriel Valley below.

The local history

The story of how Brown's resting place eventually became a designated landmark is its own classic American story, but of a small-town variety. The dispute over the gravesite is riddled with disputes over the land, neighborly squabbles about public access to the trail, and even a stint in which the headstone went missing entirely.

But a larger question underpinned those years-long debates among residents in Altadena.

 "What do you memorialize? What do you remember? What's important in U.S. history?" said Michele Zack, a local historian who has dedicated herself to preserving the grave and telling its story.

California and the Civil War

California seems about as far as an American state can get from the history of the Civil War. But the state's past and its landmarks tell a different story. Los Angeles National Cemetery is home to the graves of 11,000 Union veterans, many who came to California after the war. There were plenty of people who supported the Confederacy in the Golden State, too — a history that was unearthed not so long ago when a Confederate monument was removed at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Owen Brown's grave is now formally counted among monuments to a California past long-forgotten. Those who wander the county's foothills might just come across it and be led to question how an abolitionist was laid to rest in L.A. County.

Their introduction to that past will be a simple slab of stone that states, "Owen Brown, son of John Brown The Liberator."