Edward Fitzgerald Beale - in California

In California

In his lifetime, Beale saw San Francisco grow from an isolated village of five houses to a city of 300,000 residents.

After leaving the Navy, Beale returned to California as a manager for W. H. Aspinwall and Commodore Stockton, who had acquired large properties in there. In 1853, President Fillmore appointed Beale Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada. Congress appropriated $250,000 to improve native conditions in Beale's district. On his way to California, Beale left Washington on May 6 with a party of 13 and surveyed a route across Colorado and Utah to Los Angeles, California, for the First Transcontinental Railroad. He reached Los Angeles on August 22. Beale served as Superintendent until 1856. California Governor John Bigler appointed Beale a Brigadier General in the California state militia to give Beale additional authority to negotiate peace treaties between the Native Americans and the U.S. Army.

In 1861, Beale was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as Surveyor General of California and Nevada. He had an important passage named after him due to his widening of a cut used by the Butterfield Overland Mail, a stagecoach that operated mail between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco. In 1862, he dispatched a crew of Chinese workers to widen an 1858 cut, which also reduced the climb by 50 feet (15 m). Beale's Cut, as it was known, lasted as a transportation passage through the modern day Newhall Pass area until the construction of the Newhall Tunnel was completed in 1910. Still in existence today, Beale's cut is no longer passable by automobiles. It is difficult to find today because it is fenced off and not close enough to the Sierra Highway to be easily seen.