Henry Miller, widely known as California's cattle king and regarded as a founding father of Los Banos, was born in 1827 in Brackenheim, Kingdom of Wurtemberg, Germany, left his family farm at age 14, arrived in New York City in 1847, and reached San Francisco in 1850 with less than $6. Drawing on his farming experience, he worked as a butcher and owned his own shop within a year, building success through hard work and careful attention to stock selection, breeding, feeding regimens, and feed crops. In 1857 he secured options for all the cattle north of the Tehachapi Mountains and joined with Charles Lux to form the Miller & Lux Corporation, which by 1900 had become the largest integrated cattle-raising and meat packing enterprise in the United States. Miller based his operations at Canal Farm in Los Banos, where he oversaw 1.4 million acres of cattle pasture and farmland stretching from California to Oregon and Nevada and developed one of the West's largest water irrigation systems, using gravity-fed canals to carry San Joaquin River water to fertile fields. That system still irrigates more than 244,000 acres producing more than 40 food and fiber crops. In Los Banos he also brought the railroad to town, built a bank and company store, made many other building improvements, developed housing areas for local citizens, and created the May Day celebration to thank his employees. When he died in 1916 at age 89, he had given millions of dollars to numerous worthy causes.