The Knox House Museum
Admission is free. Memberships and donations welcomed
With independence from Spain, the Spanish Dons began to cast envious eyes on the vast holdings of the Roman Catholic
Missions. With secularization, California Governor Pio Pico in 1845 confiscated the lands of Mission San Diego de Alcala
and granted the eleven square leagues (about 47,000 acres) of El Cajon Valley to Dona Maria Antonio Estudillo, wife of
Don Miguel de Pedrorena, to repay a $500 government obligation. The grant included generally the present communities of
Lakeside, Santee, Bostonia, Glenview, Johnstown, El Cajon, and part of Grossmont.
Following the end of the Civil War - and twenty years before railroads came to this region - people from around the world
began arriving overland by wagon or by ship. After sailing from ports on America's east and southern coasts, voyagers
sailed south along South America's eastern coast. Fighting the waves around the tip of Argentina and Cape Horn, they
sailed up the South American, then Mexico's western coast and into San Diego's fair harbor. From there, they
rented or purchased wagons to carry their goods here.
The KNOX HOUSE MUSEUM is the first commercial building in El Cajon, erected eleven years after the end of the Civil War.
It is the original portion of the hotel that Amaziah Lord Knox built in 1876 near what is now the southwest corner of Main
Street and Magnolia Avenue. Originally a two-story, seven-room structure serving as Knox’s residence and hotel, it
soon boasted an add-on kitchen and dining room.
Amaziah Lord Knox - Founder of Knox's Corners - later El Cajon
In 1870, when Knox had been here a year, gold was discovered in Julian. Lying half-way between that town and the growing
city of San Diego, Knox--for $1,000 in gold coin--purchased ten acres that was an ideal spot for teamsters, miners,
and drovers to overnight. With the number of travelers booming in 1876, Knox built his hotel and some corrals. So
successful was the hotel that the bend in the road became known as Knox’s Corners. Two years later there were
25 families living in the valley and a portion of the hotel lobby became the valley post office with Knox as the first
postmaster.
Copyright 2018 El Cajon Historical Society - All Rights Reserved
A Gem of El Cajon
EVENTS:
Why is the Museum those odd colors?
-- No Tours until further notice, due to COVID-19 --
(Normally the first four Saturdays of every month, between 11:00AM and 2:00PM)
NO Public Restroom in Museum
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In the early part of the nineteenth century the explorations of the mission padres for pasture land led them to El Cajon
Valley (The Box). The surrounding foothills were a barrier to straying cattle as well as a watershed to gather the sparse
rainfall for verdant grasslands along the valley floor. For years the pasture lands supported the cattle herds of the
mission and its native Indian converts.
Knox had come to the Valley in 1869, the year that most of the area was formally opened for settlement. Employed by
Isaac Lankershim, owner of the greater part of the Rancho El Cajon land grant previously in the possession of the
Pedrorena family of Old Town, Knox was hired to manage the planting of wheat and to build a ranch house.