Perris, California in Riverside County, was named for Fred T. Perris (1837-1916), who is remembered in the region as a civil engineer with the Santa Fe Railroad. He built, among other things, the railroad lines from San Diego to San Bernardino, and up over Cajon Pass. Before that time however, he lived in the Utah Territory, which the Mormons called Deseret. It was the tumultuous post-civil-war era, when opposing forces struggled for economic and political control. His legacy there, vastly different from his work in Southern California, reveals an entirely different side of this remarkable man.