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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Pomeroy Widney, M.D. D.D. LL.D (December 26, 1841 – July 4, 1938) was an American doctor, educator, historian, and religious leader. He was one of the earliest visionaries of southern California as a garden and of Los Angeles as a metropolis.
The American Civil War brought him into medicine, and his brothers brought him to California where he received his medical degree. He saw southern California as a potential "Garden of Eden." In Los Angeles he helped found the Los Angeles Medical Society. He was a prominent backer of the new University of Southern California, becoming its second President and founding Dean of its School of Medicine. The Los Angeles Public Library was one of his major interests.
His real estate interests in California flourished, and he was an early environmentalist as well as promoter of the new metropolis. He believed profoundly in the growth of Los Angeles into a metropolis with a seaport, and using water from beyond the local mountains circling the small town, even to recreating Lake Cahuilla.
His religious beliefs led him to be a founder of the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles, as well as a Methodist pastor.
He published many books, principally on his views about California and its history, but only his Race Life of the Aryan Peoples was commercially published.
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