Douglas Gunn

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Douglas Gunn (August 31, 1841–November 26, 1891) was an American Republican politician from California.

Douglas Gunn was born 1841 in Ohio to Dr. and Mrs. Lewis C. Gunn. His family moved to Sonora, California 1852, where his father bought and ran the Sonora Herald. In 1860 his family moved to San Francisco, California where his father edited the Times, then they moved again in 1868 to San Diego. During this time Douglas Gunn learned the newspaper trade, working for San Diego Union. He lived in New Town San Diego and walked daily to Old Town, where the paper was published. In 1871 he bought the paper, moved it to New Town, and made it a daily paper. Gunn ran the paper until about 1886.

Gunn was mayor of San Diego from 1889 until 1891. He was the first mayor to serve after a new city charter, with a mayoral form of government replaced a Board of Trustees that served from 1852 to 1889. Although a Republican, the party ran two separate tickets in the mayoral election, with Gunn on the "Citizens' Non-Partisan" ticket.

Gunn's civic works include establihing a metropolitan police department for San Diego, having the Santa Fe Railroad build tracks to San Diego, organizing a company of the National Guard, and publishing an illustrated history of the county, Picturesque San Diego (1887).

Gunn died in 1891 and his father died next year, on October 15, 1892.

[edit] See also

• Obituary, Daily San Diegan, November 30, 1891 reprinted in a biography in the San Diego Historical Society
• Records of a California family; journals and letters of Lewis C. Gunn and Elizabeth Le Breton Gunn (1928), edited by Anna Gunn. Available online from "California As I Saw It", American Memory, Library of Congress exhibit
• Elliott, Wallace W. (1883). History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, California. . Reprinted 1956 by Riverside Museum Press. Mentioned in connection with Union Press on p. 182.

Preceded by George P. Tebbetts

Mayor of San Diego, California 1889—1891

Succeeded by Matthew Sherman