Joseph Chiles

Born in Kentucky, Chiles served as a colonel in the U.S. Army during the Seminole Wars, before eventually immigrating to Alta California, where he became a Mexican citizen and acquired multiple rancho grants in the Napa Valley and Sacramento Valley.

[4] Widowed, he placed his children with relatives to join the Bartleson-Bidwell Party of 1841, the first wagon train to enter Mexican Alta California over the Sierra Nevadas.

At Fort Hall he met Joseph Rutherford Walker whom he convinced to lead half the settlers with him traveling in wagons back to California down the Humboldt River.

Walker's party in 1843 also abandoned their wagons and finished getting to California by pack train.

In 1844, Chiles received Mexican citizenship and was granted the Rancho Catacula in Napa Valley.