Edward Gardner Lewis

Edward Gardner Lewis (March 4, 1869 – August 10, 1950) was an American magazine publisher, land development promoter, and political activist.

[1] Lewis moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1890s, where he worked as a salesman of insect extermination products and medicines that were said to be highly questionable.

[2] In 1902, Lewis purchased 85 acres near the construction site for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, which became the nucleus of what is now University City, Missouri.

[3][4] The school was most noted for its Art Academy, where such artists Adelaïde Alsop Robineau,[5] Frederick Hurten Rhead, and Taxile Doat worked.

Funded by membership fees, the AWR was a kind of model republic designed to help women educate themselves in government and otherwise prepare themselves for a future in which they would have the right to vote.

[6] Shortly after founding the AWR, Gardner decided to establish a new agrarian colony for the republic in what is now Atascadero, California (see next section).

[6] In 1913, Lewis put together a group of investors to buy up land in San Luis Obispo County, California, starting with Rancho Atascadero.

[6] Starting in 1914, the land was subdivided, thousands of acres of orchards were planted, and a road was built from Atascadero to the Pacific coast at Morro Bay that is now a section of State Route 41.

[8][9] The architectural centerpiece of the town was the city hall and museum, an Italian Renaissance–style building built of local-clay bricks that was damaged in the 2003 San Simeon earthquake.

[1] When the war ended, the U.S. government canceled the dehydrating plant contract and Lewis found himself once more in dire financial straits.

The section of California State Route 41 between Atascadero and Morro Bay is now officially designated the "E.G. Lewis Highway".