Tejon Ranch in the context of "Tehachapi Mountains"

Colonel Robert Symington Baker (1826–1894) was a businessman and landowner from Rhode Island. He came to California in 1849 and engaged in mining supplies business, also as Cook and Baker in San Francisco, California. Later he became associated with General Beale in the cattle and sheep business in the northern part of the state and in the Tejon area.

Edward Fitzgerald Beale (February 4, 1822 – April 22, 1893) was an American naval officer, frontiersman, rancher and diplomat. He fought in the Mexican–American War, emerging as a hero of the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. He achieved national fame in 1848 in carrying to the east the first gold samples from California, contributing to the gold rush.

In the late 1850s, Beale surveyed and built Beale's Wagon Road, which many settlers used to move to the West, and which became part of Route 66 and the route for the Transcontinental railroad. As California's first Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Beale helped charter a humanitarian policy towards Native Americans in the 1850s. He also founded the Tejon Ranch, the largest private landholding in California, and became a millionaire several times over. He received appointments from five U.S. presidents: Andrew Jackson appointed him to the Philadelphia Naval School, Millard Fillmore appointed him Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada, James Buchanan appointed him to survey a wagon road from New Mexico to California, Abraham Lincoln appointed him Surveyor General of California and Nevada, and Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Ambassador to Austria-Hungary. He was a friend of Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody and Ulysses S. Grant.