J. Smeaton Chase

Joseph Smeaton Chase (8 April 1864 – 29 March 1923) was an English-born American author, traveler, and photographer.

It is known, however, that he lived on a mountainside and managed to obtain a job tutoring a wealthy rancher's children in the San Gabriel Valley.

Subsequently, in 1910 he took a trip with local painter Carl Eytel, travelling on horseback[1] from Los Angeles to Laguna and then down to San Diego.

[3] He was passionate that the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains be preserved as a national park.

[4] Also his name is engraved at his parents' (Samuel and Jane) headstone in the St. Mary the Virgin Cemetery, London Borough of Bexley, England.