Milton Santee

Milton Santee (1835–1901), was a 19th-century civil engineer, surveyor, miner, real estate developer, and entrepreneur in Missouri and Southern California.

He developed the city of Ramona, California, and served several terms on the Los Angeles Common Council.

Santee was a lieutenant from Pennsylvania in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

During his early career as a surveyor, Santee made surveys of Dixon, Missouri, and also laid out the town of Richland, Missouri in 1869.

Santee was elected to two consecutive terms to represent the 4th electoral district on the Los Angeles Common Council, the legislative branch of the city, the first beginning December 9, 1884, and the second ending December 13, 1886.

In 1887 he opened the Ramona Hotel in Julian, California. a hostelry that was later renamed the Kenilworth Inn.

In 1888, Santee had mines in San Diego County, "30 miles from Dos Palmos and three miles from the line surveyed for the Cuyamaca Road." In January of that year he was one of the incorporators of the Lower California Mining Company (Mexico), which was capitalized at $5 million. He later defended a deal the company made with a Chinese consortium that would send Chinese workers to the mines in Mexico:

When everything is in full working order we expect that there will be about 1,000 Mongolians taken down there, all of whom will come out of this State [California], and thereby greatly decrease the unwelcome resident population. According to the Scott Exclusion Act they will not be able to return, although if they want to I have no doubt that they could manage it, for there are only a handful of men guarding the western 1,000 miles of Mexican frontier. But I do not think that they will want to come back, for they will get better wages down there and will not be looked upon with the aversion they are here.

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