USA > California > Riverside County > History of Riverside County, California > Part 17
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For, if you want that kind of town, Just make it out of this."
When the city has improved its water system, and more houses are surrounded by lawns and flowers; when the city has electric lights, paved streets, when there is a little better house-keeping on the part of the city, when the water bonds are paid and the beauti- ful foot-hill section is dotted with homes; we can well say that the prophecy of the board of directors of the Perris Irrigation District uttered in such good faith so many years ago has really come to pass and that Perris, the foot-hill city, is "a town that's on the map."
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CHAPTER XIX. MORENO VALLEY By Mrs. W. H. Ellis
The unsuspecting traveler who has crossed the Colorado river and entered Southern California, naturally looks around him for the orange groves of which he has so often heard and is astonished not to find himself surrounded by them; but, gradually, the truth is forced upon his mind that, in this section of our country, he must not base his calculations upon eastern distances or eastern areas. For, even after he has passed the wilderness of Arizona and the California frontier, he discovers that the Eldorado of his dreams lies on the other side of the desert, two hundred miles in breadth, beyond whose desolate expanse the siren of the Sunset Sea still beckons him and whispers: "This is the final barrier; cross it and I am yours."
But when this "final barrier" is crossed there is much room for disappointment if one expects to find the country an unbroken paradise of orange trees and roses. Thousands of oranges and lemons, it is true, suspend their miniature globes of gold against the sky; but interspersed between their groves are wastes of sand, reminding one that all the fertile portion of this region has been truly wrested from the wilderness, as Holland from the sea. Ac- cordingly, since San Bernardino county alone is twice as large as Massachusetts, it is not difficult to understand why a con- tinuous expanse of verdure is not seen. The truth is, Southern California, with a few exceptions, is cultivated only where man has brought to it vivifying water. When that appears, life springs up from sterility, as water gushed forth from the rock in the Arabian desert when the great leader of the Israelites smote it in obedience to Divine command. Hence there is always present here the fasci- nation of the unattained, which yet is readily attainable, patiently waiting for the master-hand that shall unlock the sand-roofed treasure-houses of fertility with a crystal key. Of the three things essential to vegetation-soil, sun, and water-man must here con- tribute the water.
Once let the tourist appreciate the fact that almost all the ver-
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dure which delights the eye is the gift of water at the hand of man, and any disappointment he may have at first experience will be changed to admiration. Moreover, with the least encouragement this country bursts forth into verdure, crowns its responsive soil with fertility and smiles with bloom. Even the slightest tract of herbage, however brown it may be in the dry season, will in the springtime clothe itself with green and decorate its emerald robe with spangled flowers. In fact, the wonderful profusion of wild flowers, which, when the winter rains have saturated the ground, transform hillsides into floral terraces, can never be too highly praised.
Is it strange, then, that sudden transformations of sterile plains and mountains into bits of paradise make tourists in Southern California wildly enthusiastic? They actually see fulfilled before their eyes the prophecy of Isaiah, "The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." The explanation is, however, simple. The land is really rich. The ingredients are already here. Instead of being worthless, as was once supposed, this is a precious soil. The Aladdin's wand that unlocks all its treasures is the irrigating ditch; its "open sesame" is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras. A Roman conqueror once said that he had but to stamp upon the earth and legions would spring to do his bidding. So capital has stamped upon this sandy wilderness, and in a single generation a civilized community has leaped into astonished life. Yet do we realize the immense amount of labor necessitated by such irrigation? Every few rods a pipe rises from the ground. It can with difficulty then be imagined how many of these pipes have been laid, and how in- numerable are the ditches through which the water is made to flow. Should man relax his diligence for a single year, the region would relapse into sterility; but on the other hand, what a land is this for those who have the skill and industry to call forth all its capa- bilities! What powers of productiveness may still be sleeping underneath its soil, awaiting but the kiss of water and the touch of man to waken them to life! Thus one tourist expressed himself and this is in very truth what might be said on a visit to the broad fields of the Moreno country.
The beautiful Moreno valley not more than twenty-five years ago was "a sterile plain" dotted here and there with Mexican
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camps. Among the earliest settlers to venture here were T. K. Lyman, Mr. Leonard and Mr. Freefield.
About 1881-82 E. G. Judson and F. E. Brown secured fifteen hundred acres of land in San Bernardino county, on the sloping hillsides south of the Mill Creek zanja, surveyed and platted the same into five, ten and twenty-acre lots, with wide avenues, cross- ing the whole plat. This enterprise was regarded as an experiment from the fact that the red soil of the slope had never been tested as to its adaptability to horticultural pursuits. With plenty of water and good cultivation the doubt as to the value of the land was soon removed and the success of the colony enterprise was as- sured. Thus encouraged the projectors enlarged their possessions by additional purchases, until they had between three and four thousand acres in their colony, which, on account of the soil, they named Redlands. Thus these two men are responsible for the existence of the beautiful city of Redlands. Mr. Judson organized the water companies of that place, while Mr. Brown was the water engineer. It was Mr. Brown who discovered the great Bear valley as a reservoir and built the great Bear valley dam. With the suc- cess of the Redlands "experiment" and the vast amount of water stored in the Bear valley reservoir Mr. Brown began to cast about for more worlds to conquer. He came into what is now the Moreno country, a beautiful mountain valley lying to the northeast of the Perris valley. Here he secured a large acreage, surveyed and platted it into ten-acre tracts with wide avenues running one-half mile apart east and west, and one-quarter mile apart running north and south. Settlers began to come, a town was established and business places opened.
People of the valley wanted to name the town in honor of Mr. Brown, but he declined, so the name "Moreno," a Spanish word meaning brown, was agreed upon.
Water scarcity was a great problem to these courageous people. The only well in the valley was one on the Sorbee ranch on Perris boulevard. A spring on the Condee ranch supplied ten barrels a day, and here people would stand in line and wait their turn to carry away a small supply of water. Finally George H. Kelsey, who had come into the valley on November 29, 1890, and settled with his family near the townsite, thought he saw indications of a spring of water on a nearby hill. Upon investigation he found this to be
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true, and from these three sources came the water supply of Moreno valley. The early settlers were engaged in dry farming, though Mr. Condee, who was afterwards the first county clerk of River- side county, had a few oranges.
Through the efforts of Mr. Brown other settlers were brought into the valley and in 1890 operations were begun toward the form- ing of an irrigation district. The Alessandro Irrigation district, consisting of 25,500 acres of land, was organized, and the district bonded for $765,000. On April 18, 1891, the water from the great Bear valley reservoir reached Moreno.
With the prospect of having plenty of water, the people went extensively into the raising of citrus fruit. In the spring of 1891 fifty-five hundred acres were set out to trees, but by fall every vestige was gone, having been eaten by grasshoppers. For that one season the grasshoppers were so large in size and so great in numbers that they destroyed everything, even ate the telephone poles. Nothing could be found to extinguish them; they ate the poisons spread for them as readily as the vegetation. People were constantly on guard to protect themselves, for fear of being bitten whenever they had occasion to go outside their houses. However, this pest lasted only one season and the next spring this large acreage of fruit trees was entirely replanted.
An English company with large holdings in the valley put in eight hundred and eighty acres to deciduous fruits and some four hundred and forty acres to olives and other fruits. The streets run- ning through this tract were lined on either side with eucalyptus trees. This enterprise, however, was short lived. A heavy frost in 1891, with the season of grasshoppers and finally the failure of the Bear valley water, forced the company to abandon their project.
For a few short years conditions were most prosperous. The little town of Moreno grew to be possessed of four brick blocks, a fine two-story brick school building and two churches. There were two general merchandise stores, a hardware store, a harness store, drug store, real estate and insurance office, and the Bear Valley Water Company office, besides the offices of Dr. H. A. At- wood, now of Riverside, and Dr. France, now of San Jacinto.
There were five schools in the valley: one at Moreno; one at Armada, about three and a half miles distant; one at Cloverdale,
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another at Alessandro and still another at Ramona, employing all together five teachers.
Of the two churches, the Congregational and the Methodist Episcopal, the Congregational was the first to be established. Rev. Mr. Wolcott was the first pastor, preaching at Moreno Sunday mornings and at Alessandro Sunday afternoons. The Moreno church was built in the spring of 1891. George H. Kelsey, now of Riverside, was the first church clerk as well as one of the first school trustees of the town. The Methodist Episcopal church has long since abandoned the field.
An enterprise that played no small part in the life of the town and valley was the weekly newspaper known as the "Moreno Indi- cator." It was published by Franklin and Mary Austin. Mrs. Austin is now a popular contributor to many of our well-known coast magazines.
It ought to be mentioned here that on March 12, 1891, a son was born to Mr. and Mrs. George H. Kelsey. This son, Kenneth, was the first white child born in Moreno valley. The Kelsey family now live in Riverside, moving to that city from Moreno in 1900, and are well known in business and social circles of that city.
When Ramona and Alessandro were journeying from San Pasquale to Soboba, they crossed this Moreno valley. The author tells us-"It was in the early afternoon that they entered the broad valley. They entered it from the west. As they came in, though the sky over their heads was overcast and gray, the eastern and north- eastern part of the valley was flooded with a strange light, at once ruddy and golden. It was a glorious sight. The jagged top and spurs of San Jacinto mountain shone like the turrets and posterns of a citadel built of rubies. The glow seemed preternatural.
" 'Behold San Jacinto,' cried Alessandro. Ramona exclaimed in delight. 'It is an omen,' she said. 'We are going into the sunlight out of the shadow,' and she glanced back at the west, which was of a slaty blackness. 'I like it not,' said Alessandro. The shadow follows too fast.' "'
And so it might seem to those who enjoyed the short-lived pros- perity of this valley. "The shadow followed too fast." At the end of about the fourth year of the Bear valley water supply, came a cycle of dry years. This played havoc with the supply of the Bear Valley Company, and this vast reservoir of water, once thought to
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be inexhaustible, lowered to such an extent that all water for the Moreno and Perris valleys had to be cut off entirely.
This disaster coupled with the drought, was destined to de- populate this beautiful valley. Coming up to this time with its five hundred inhabitants, schools, churches and a fine literary society, composed of both men and women, it was an attractive spot for the making of homes.
The history of the Perris valley was repeated in the Moreno valley, and having attracted such wide attention in its palmy days, naturally the decline attracted also a widespread attention. In an English newspaper of this period, when people were obliged to make new homes in other communities more endowed with this one of nature's best gifts-water-occurred an article regarding this valley in Southern California. It was called "The valley on wheels," and the article described how houses could be seen on trucks being moved in to a nearby city called Riverside.
In this valley, as in the Perris valley, the Bear valley water bonds have never been paid. Page after page could be written on the litigation in courts over these bonds.
About 1890 the few remaining ranchers in the valley contrib- uted toward a fund to be used in boring a well. This was to de- termine whether or not water was to be found underneath the sur- face. Permission was granted them to bore this well in the center of the intersection of two streets. The well was bored and produces a flow of twenty inches. It has since become the property of Mr. Nelson on Redlands boulevard.
The Moreno Water Company has since this time developed wells that produce a flow of about one hundred and four inches. This with a few private wells furnishes the valley's water supply.
The valley, consisting of about 35,500 acres, now is devoted to dry farming and the raising of citrus fruits, there being five hun- dred acres planted and producing the finest citrus fruits to be found in Southern California. Grapefruit grown here this year brought the highest price at the San Bernardino Orange Show.
The most fertile soil in Riverside county is found here, and may the Aladdin's wand that can unlock all its treasures-the irri- gating ditch-soon wander here and there throughout the length and breadth of this beautiful valley and call forth the powers of productiveness still sleeping.
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CHAPTER XX. THE SAN GORGONIO PASS By Jessica Bird 1 !
The San Gorgonio Pass, gateway from the lowlands of the Colorado desert through the magnificent mountains of the coast range to the valleys of the Pacific slope, is perhaps the only moun- tain valley of any importance included within the boundaries of Riverside county.
The geographical situation of the pass is peculiar and inter- esting in several ways. A fertile valley running east and west, it lies at an average elevation of 2,000 feet, is from three to fifteen miles in width and completely separates two ranges of towering mountains. On the north of the pass lies the San Bernardino range, with Mt. San Gorgonio (Old Grayback), 11,485 feet high and the loftiest peak in Southern California, looking down over the numer- ous lines of foothills which reach the valley below. To the south lie the other foothills reaching upwards into the mountains which form the San Jacinto range and are topped by a peak bearing that name, and having an elevation of 10,805 feet.
Cradled between the sheltering mountains the San Gorgonio Pass is favored in many ways. The chemistry of pure mountain air tempered to a most healthful dryness by the proximity of the desert, the water which comes from the canyons and brings with it the crystal clearness of the snows which lie practically all the year round on the tops of the mountain peaks, and soil, which is fer- tility itself, have been summed up into a total of prosperity and con- tentment which marks the valley as a whole and makes for the con- tinued growth of the three towns of Beaumont, Banning and Cabazon, which lie at intervals of six miles along the pass.
EARLY DAYS IN THE PASS.
The history of the pass undoubtedly dates far, far back to the times when the Indians wandered at will over the country, choosing the choicest spots and most favored localities for their camping grounds. This was even before the Spaniards brought their civil- ization into California and penetrated the valleys and mountains of the southern part of the state. There are evidences that the Span-
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ish people had an outpost of some sort in San Gorgonio Pass, which was probably located about the spot where the Highland Home ranch is now. In 1853-4 and somewhat later there were ruins of several adobe buildings at this point, indicating the previous occupation of the land. It is known that a wagon road or trail through the pass was in very early use, and even when the first white settlers arrived, there were Spaniards living at various ranchos between this valley and the San Bernardino valley, some of these people being located in San Timeteo canyon west of Beau- mont. These people traveled about the pass in primitive ox-carts, visiting sometimes at the homes of the white people. It is practi- cally impossible to find anything definite regarding the days of the Spanish padres and the earliest ranchos, concerning the history of the San Gorgonio Pass.
The present-day searcher finds that the light of real and con- crete facts began to illuminate the darkness of the past of this valley only about the middle of the last century, when as a direct route for the emigrants on their way to the Pacific slope from Arizona and the east and middle west, it became well known. Emigrants at that time knew the trail through this pass as the Santa Fe trail. After the wearisome trip over the desert, the mountain valley must have appeared a veritable paradise to the tired travelers, for in those days, before cultivation of the soil had been thought of in the pass, it was covered with an abundance of fine green grass. It is little wonder that the valley was looked upon as a suitable place for stock-raising, and that later the grassy plain with its streams of water furnished from the nearby canyons should have been chosen as a grazing country where cattle ranchos were established.
Although the white emigrants passed through this valley in the early days the inhabitants were chiefly Spanish and Indian peoples. A few white men may have drifted into the favored region about this time, but few if any definite dates regarding them are to be found. Daniel Sexton was the name of a man who claimed to have lived in this valley in 1842, when, he said, he made his home among the Indians who worked with him at wood cutting up in the Edgar canyon.
EXPLORATION AND SURVEY PARTIES.
In 1853 a party of topographical engineers, under the direc- tion of Lieut. R. S. Williamson, was sent to California by Congress,
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upon the recommendation of Jefferson Davis, then secretary of war, to explore the coast range mountains, "in order to ascertain the most practicable and economical route from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean." This party, which sailed from New York in May, 1853, arrived in San Francisco a month later, and repaired to Benicia, from which point after preparations, the journey was commenced. The party made extensive trips into the mountains both of the northern and the southern portions of the state, and arrived in San Gorgonio Pass in November, 1853. For several reasons the party had separated before reaching this point, so that only the wagon train, under the leadership of Lieutenant Parke, went through the San Gorgonio Pass and traveled onward to the desert.
Perhaps the most interesting report concerning this pass and included in the full report of the explorations presented to Con- gress in 1856, was that of the geologist and mineralogist of the party, William P. Blake, who appears to have been much impressed with several features of San Gorgonio Pass, which was subse- quently chosen by the party as the most desirable route for a rail- road through the mountains in California. One of the chief fea- tures appealing forcibly to Geologist Blake was that this pass was not a mere break in the mountains, but "an absolute branch or dis- location of the entire chain." This coupled with Lieutenant Parke's statement in his report that "this pass is so uniform and open that it may be considered the best pass in the Coast range," shows plainly the impression its natural advantages made upon the prac- tical men and experts of those days. It is interesting to note that it was subsequently made a railroad gate through the mountains and is now traversed by the main line of the Southern Pacific Company.
One peculiarity discovered in the reports of these early ex- plorers is that the name of the mountain now called San Jacinto was then San Gorgonio, while the peak now bearing the latter name was known simply as Grayback, or sometimes confused with its close neighbor Mt. San Bernardino, and called by that name. In all the early reports and histories Mt. San Jacinto is spoken of as Mt. San Gorgonio.
Geologist Blake plainly showed in his report of San Gorgonio Pass that he was very favorably impressed with the quality of the
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soil, for he said concerning this; "there are no rock formations that crop out along the trail; the whole substratum of the soil is loose drift, or sedimentary materials derived from the wearing down and disintegration of granite. The soil formed of the minerals constituting the slope and surface of the pass is fertile and valuable for agriculture." There was very little to prove his assertion at that time, for there were few trees and grape vines planted in the pass then, and even the Indians who had lived here- abouts for years raised only very meager crops of barley, corn, melons and various vegetables. It remained for the later years to bring positive proof of the geologist's wisdom.
A party of government surveyors under the direction of Colo- nel Washington made a survey of the lands in this portion of the state about the early '50s, completing the work in the San Gorgonio Pass in the year 1855. They ran the San Bernardino base line, which runs through the mountains north of the pass, and surveyed also the meridian which crosses the pass at a point between the present towns of Banning and Beaumont.
Fremont, whose name is so closely connected with the early history of California, is said to have spent some time in the pass, about 1846-7 or perhaps prior to the time of the Mexican war.
SAN GORGONIO RANCHO GRANT.
Pio Pico, the last of the Spanish governors of California, granted a large portion of the valley to three men, Powell Weaver, Colonel Williams and Wallace Woodruff, probably about 1845. This grant was known as the Rancho de San Gorgonio, and con- tained eleven leagues of land, including territory now occupied by Banning and Beaumont. One corner of the grant approached the place at present known as the Wolfskill ranch which lies in the hills south of Beaumont.
The papers concerning the granting of this land to the pioneers were lost in transit by mail to Washington, D. C., where they were being sent to be recorded about the time the railroad was obtaining right of way through this pass; so that it was impossible ever to substantiate the claims held by the original grantees or their assignees.
COMING OF WHITE SETTLERS.
The Weavers lived at a rancho in the valley after they had been granted a share in the land, with headquarters and an adobe
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house near the place now known as the old Edgar vineyard, which is located north of Beaumont.
In 1853 Dr. Isaac W. Smith and family came from Iowa, via Utah to California, arriving through the Cajon Pass and reaching San Bernardino, then a Mormon settlement, that year. The same year they came to the San Gorgonio Pass and lived there for some time at the Weaver ranch, later moving to the Highland home (then called the Smith ranch) northeast of Beaumont, where they made their home. Dr. Smith bought Powell (called "Pauline" by the Indians) Weaver's share of the grant lands. Ollie Smith, who was born there in 1860, was the first white child born in the pass.
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