San Timoteo Canyon is a river valley canyon southeast of Redlands, in the far northwestern foothills of the

San Jacinto Mountains The San Jacinto Mountains (''Avii Hanupach''Munro, P., et al. ''A Mojave Dictionary''. Los Angeles: UCLA. 1992. in Mojave) are a mountain range in Riverside County, located east of Los Angeles in southern California in the United States. The mo ...

in the Inland Empire region of

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

Geography

The canyon runs from its southern inflow mouth in

Beaumont Beaumont may refer to: Places Canada * Beaumont, Alberta * Beaumont, Quebec England * Beaumont, Cumbria * Beaumont, Essex ** Beaumont Cut, a canal closed in the 1930s * Beaumont Street, Oxford France (communes) * Beaumont, Ardèche * ...

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Uni ...

, in a northwest alignment, to its northern outflow mouth west of Redlands and east of Loma Linda in

San Bernardino County San Bernardino County (), officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 2,181, ...

. San Timoteo Creek formed the canyon, and flows northwest through it to its confluence with the Santa Ana River, being a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

of it. The creek drains the Banning Valley west of the

San Gorgonio Pass The San Gorgonio Pass, or Banning Pass, is a elevation gap on the rim of the Great Basin between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass was formed by the San Andreas Fault, a major tra ...

water divide, and the watersheds of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains that feed into it.

History

The canyon was part of the winter homeland of the

Serrano people The Serrano are an indigenous people of California. They use the autonyms of Taaqtam, meaning "people"; Maarrênga’yam, "people from Morongo"; and Yuhaaviatam, "people of the pines." Today the Maarrênga'yam are enrolled in the Morongo Band o ...

for thousands of years. There were

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

s in the area. The

San Bernardino de Sena Estancia The San Bernardino de Sena Estancia (also known as the San Bernardino Rancho or Asistencia) was a ranch outpost of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in what is now in Redlands, California, United States. It was built to graze cattle, and for Indian ...

was established in 1819 as a ranch outpost Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, for the grazing of cattle by the Mission Indians. The original buildings grew to include a chapel, tile kiln, lime kiln, and a grist mill. The canyon was part of

Rancho San Bernardino Rancho San Bernardino was a Mexican land grant in present-day San Bernardino County, California given in 1842 by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to José del Carmen Lugo, José María Lugo, Vicente Lugo, and Diego Sepulveda. The grant included a la ...

, the 1842 Mexican land grant by Alta California Governor Juan B. Alvarado to

José del Carmen Lugo José del Carmen Lugo (1813 – c. 1870) was a major 19th century Californio landowner in Southern California. History He was born in 1813 at the Pueblo de Los Angeles, in Spanish colonial Alta California, then a province of the Viceroyalty ...

, José María Lugo, Vicente Lugo, and Diego Sepulveda.

Irving Gang, Cahuilla posse, and American militia

On the 27th day of May, 1851,

Juan Antonio Juan Ignacio Antonio (born 5 January 1988) is an Argentine former professional football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally ...

, the Californian Native American chief of the Mountain

Cahuilla The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Irving Gang of John "Red" Irving and his

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

and Sydney outlaws in San Timoteo Canyon. Irving's band of raiding thieves had robbed people and stolen property throughout the San Bernardino Valley, including on

where Juan Antonio's Cahuilla village at

Politana Politana or Apolitana was the first Spanish settlement in the San Bernardino Valley of California. It was established as a mission chapel and supply station by the Mission San Gabriel in the a rancheria of the Guachama Indians that lived on the ...

was located. Acting on the orders of the local Justice of the Peace, the '' Californio'' owner of the rancho and whose house the Irving Gang were robbing at the time, the Cahuilla attacked and pursued them into San Timoteo Canyon, where in a running fight they killed eleven of the twelve men in the gang after they refused to surrender. The Native Americans of Southern California, 1852. Family Tree Legends Records Collection (Online Database). Pearl Street Software, 2004-2005. pp. 40-41
For description of Juan Antonio's campaign against John Irving and his gang of San Francisco and Sydney outlaws, as well as the subsequent repercussions, see Beattie, Heritage of the Valley, 84-89; History of San Bernardino County (San Francisco, Wallace W. Elliott and Company, 1883), 77-79; Los Angeles Star, June 7, 1851, and November 20, 1851, Hayes, Scrapbooks, XXXVIII, Bancroft Library. There were decades of precedent for the Mountain Cahuilla who working on the local ranchos, tracking and hunting down bandits and other tribe's raiders was a service they were requested for in the San Bernardino region, during the 1822—1846 Mexican rule in Alta California. With this 1851 order, they were still authorized to carry out legally requested local law enforcement actions, now within the year old U.S. state. However some newly arrived American settlers to

and the area resented the killing of "white men" by "indians" and mistook it to be the beginning of a Mission Indian uprising. A company of militia from the Presidio of San Diego was sent against the Cahuilla. At the time, present day San Bernardino and Riverside Counties were within San Diego County, and served by troops based at the presidio. Juan Antonio's Cahuilla band fled Politana, going to their homelands in the

. The American leader of the militia, Major General

Joshua Bean Joshua H. Bean (c. 1818 – November 7, 1852) was an American political figure. Joshua Bean was born c. 1818 in Mason County, Kentucky to Phantly Roy Bean (November 21, 1804 – June 13, 1844) and his wife Anna Gore. His paternal grandparents ...

, discovered the truth about the events and with difficulty restrained his troops from attacking the Cahuilla, preventing a battle and massacre. Closely following the outcome of the Irving Gang incident, in late 1851, Juan Antonio, his warriors and their families, moved eastward from Politana, toward the

and settled in a valley which branched off to the north from San Timoteo Canyon, at a village named

Saahatpa Saahatpa was a former Cahuilla settlement in Riverside County. It was a settlement of Juan Antonio's Mountain Cahuilla from 1851 to 1863. It was located in a valley that branched to the northeast from San Timoteo Canyon. The site is marked by Ca ...

. In November 1851, the Garra Revolt occurred, a conflict of the

Yuma War The Yuma War was the name given to a series of United States military operations conducted in southern California and what is today southwestern Arizona from 1850 to 1853. The Quechan (also known as Yuma) were the primary opponent of the United ...

. The Cupeño leader Antonio Garra attempted to bring Juan Antonio and the Mountain Cahuilla band into the Serrano, Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians independence revolt. Juan Antonio, a new ally of the Americans, captured Antonio Garra, and turned him over to American officials ending the Garra Revolt.

American expansion

One of San Timoteo Canyon's more famous residents was the teenaged

Wyatt Earp Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp took part in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which l ...

, whose family lived in the canyon from 1864 to 1868. The canyon was used in 1877 by the Southern Pacific Railroad for its new southern transcontinental route's tracks into/out of the

Los Angeles Basin The Los Angeles Basin is a sedimentary Structural basin, basin located in Southern California, in a region known as the Peninsular Ranges. The basin is also connected to an wikt:anomalous, anomalous group of east-west trending chains of mountai ...

and

, to/from the eastern U.S. For a time in the mid-1950s it was considered as one of three possible alignments for the path of

Interstate 10 in California Interstate 10 (I-10) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from Santa Monica, California to Jacksonville, Florida. The segment of I-10 in California runs east from Santa Monica through Los Angeles, San Berna ...

, as part of the new

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

program, though the central route through Redlands was selected.

Parks

San Timoteo Canyon State Park

San Timoteo Canyon State Park is in development for public access and recreation facilities, and is not yet open. In 2001 a portion of the canyon, through the efforts of the Riverside Land Conservancy and others, was protected for a

regional park A regional park is an area of land preserved on account of its natural beauty, historic interest, recreational use or other reason, and under the administration of a form of local government. Definition A regional park can be a special park distri ...

, and then came under management of the

California State Park The California Department of Parks and Recreation, more commonly known as California State Parks, manages the California state parks system. The system administers 279 separate park units on 1.4 million acres (570,000 hectares), with over 280 ...

s department. When the regional park opens, it will add some much-needed public open space for the fast-growing Inland Empire. The park's features will include: trails for hiking and horseback riding; the native flora and fauna of the canyon's varied

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s; and historical landmarks, including the San Timoteo Schoolhouse.

San Timoteo Canyon Schoolhouse

The San Timoteo Canyon Schoolhouse, a museum and park operated by the Riverside County Parks department, was built in 1883, and added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on January 19, 2001. It was acquired by Riverside County Parks from the Beaumont Unified School District in 1993, but was not opened to the public until after 2007, when a five-year restoration was completed.

Fossils discovery

In 2010, a construction crew found a deposit of

Quaternary Period The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...

prehistoric animal

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s dating back 1.4 million years before present in San Timoteo Canyon. The well-preserved natural cache contained nearly 1,500 bone fragments. They included those of: a giant cat that was the ancestor of the saber-toothed tiger; ground sloths the size of a modern-day grizzly bear; two types of camels; and more than 1,200 bones from small rodents. Other finds include new species of deer, horse, and possibly llama.Calif. utility stumbles on 1.4M-year-old fossils
/ref>

References

External links

* official website {{authority control Canyons and gorges of California Landforms of Riverside County, California Landforms of San Bernardino County, California State parks of California History of Riverside County, California History of San Bernardino County, California Bradshaw Trail Parks in Riverside County, California Parks in San Bernardino County, California Beaumont, California Loma Linda, California Redlands, California San Jacinto Mountains Santa Ana River Quaternary California Pleistocene paleontological sites of North America Paleontology in California Inland Empire