Forest Falls is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California,http://california.hometownlocator.com/ca/san-bernardino/forest-falls.cfm All about Forest Falls on california hometownlocator due east of Los Angeles. The community has a population of 1,102 and contains 712 houses. Forest Falls is best known for the waterfalls on Vivian and Falls creeks and as a point of access for recreation in the San Bernardino National Forest, particularly the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area, which lies directly north of the community.
History The earliest known inhabitants of the upper reaches of Mill Creek Canyon, in which Forest Falls resides, were the indigenous Yuhaaviatam, a Takic people descended from the Shoshone. On encountering these people, the Spaniards named them Serranos or mountaineers. Local clan groups that inhabited the current Yucaipa, Mentone/Crafton, and Redlands areas spent the summers in the cooler environs of the canyon hunting, fishing, and gathering.Gifford, Edward Winslow. 1918. "Clans and Moieties in Southern California." University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 14:155-219 They returned to the warmer valleys at the base of the mountains in the autumn after gathering acorns, a staple of their diet.Lerch, M.K. (2005) Acorns: The California Indian Staff of Life, Heritage Keepers Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 1, 2005
The first American settlement in Forest Falls was at a sawmill built under the direction of Mormon settlers Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman in the summer of 1853. Fellow Mormon pioneer David Frederick and his wife Mary Ann Winner Frederick were the first year-round resident managers of the mill from 1854 to 1858.Partridge, S.H. (2016) “The Thirteenth Apostle: The Diaries of Amasa M. Lyman, 1832-1877,” Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books
The discovery of marble and onyx in the farthest reaches of the canyon in 1888 led to the development of the town of Burris Camp when George Burris discovered a mile-long vein of translucent white, pink, blue, and green marble in 1904."Rich Deposit Will Employ a Thousand Men." Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1907 At its peak, the Burris quarry employed a thousand workers to cut and move the stone by a small incline railway and ox carts to Los Angeles, but the vein began to fracture before the 1920s. The failure of the marble mine left limestone to quarry through World War II into the 1940s."Syndicate to Work Deposit of Limestone," The San Bernardino County Sun, 06 Jul 1941, Sun, Page 13
In 1897, California pioneer Richard Jackson patented one hundred and sixty acresUnited States of America Homestead Certificate #2842, 1897 and built Forest Home Resort, ferrying guests by stagecoach from the train in Redlands."Richard Jackson, Pioneer Developer, Succumbs at 89," San Bernardino Sun, November 28, 1957 He sold the resort to his brother-in-law, Thomas Akers, who expanded it with a land patent of an additional one hundred and sixty acres.United States of America Homestead Certificate #2863, 1897 Forest Home Resort operated under the succeeding ownership of Cyrus Baldwin,Deed, April 14, 1905, San Bernardino County Sun, October 2, 1907, Page 10 Reverend Frank Culver and then his son Frank Culver, Jr.,"Redlands Resort Founder is Dead," San Bernardino County Sun, Wed. December 29, 1920, Page 11 and Harold Durant from 1905 until 1938 when Dr. Henrietta Mears arranged to purchase the famous resort and it became Forest Home Christian Conference Center."Church Group Buys Famous Forest Home," The San Bernardino County Sun, 02 Jul 1938, Sat, Page 5 Redlands banker N.L. Levering purchased 640 acres from the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1920 and subdivided the land into 700 lots for home sites, calling it the Valley of the Falls Tract."Big Deal in Mountain Land," San Bernardino County Sun, November 16, 1920, Page 11 By 1930, four more resorts operated in upper Mill Creek Canyon; Big Falls Lodge, Torreys, Big Pine Resort, and the Elkhorn Inn, owned by Mrs. James A. Roulette."Mill Creek Resorts," San Bernardino County Sun, July 3, 1930, Page 10 Forest Home had a post office, but Mrs. Roulette petitioned the U.S. government for a second one and won the right to operate it in her store in 1929 as the Fallsvale post office.San Bernardino County Sun, August 16, 1929, Page 13 In 1960, the Forest Home and Fallsvale post offices combined to create Forest Falls, the new name for the previously separate communities of Valley of the Falls, Fallsvale, and Forest Home."To Dedicate P.O. at Forest Falls Saturday, Redlands Daily Facts, September 27, 1960, Page 7
Geography Forest Falls is situated in the San Bernardino Mountains of California, at elevations ranging from approximately to along the steep gradient of Mill Creek, a tributary of the Santa Ana River. It lies due east of the Los Angeles Civic Center, and from San Bernardino, the nearest large city and the county seat. The community stretches for approximately in a narrow band primarily along the south side of the linear canyon of Mill Creek, which trends slightly north of east. The highest portions of the San Bernardino Mountains, including southern California's highest point, San Gorgonio Mountain at , lie directly north of Forest Falls in the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area. The falls for which the community is named descend from this high area over the northern edge of the canyon of Mill Creek.
Geology The rocks immediately surrounding Forest Falls are basement rocks characteristic of the major part of the San Bernardino Mountains, that is, Paleoproterozoic gneiss, Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic marble and quartzite, and Late Cretaceous granitic rocks. Marble and quartzite are present only in minor amounts in the immediate vicinity, although a small marble quarry up-canyon from the town was operated sporadically and uneconomically from 1908 into the 1940s.Robinson, John W. (1989). The San Bernardinos: the Mountain Country from Cajon Pass to Oak Glen, Two Centuries of Changing Use. Arcadia, CA: Big Santa Anita Historical Society. The extremely linear canyon in which Forest Falls is located follows the trace of the Mill Creek Fault, a now-inactive strand of the San Andreas Fault system along which approximately of right-lateral strike-slip displacement occurred during the period from 500,000 to 250,000 years ago. (Presently active strands of this fault system lie to the south.) Matti, J.C., Morton, D.M., and Cox, B.F. (1992). The San Andreas fault system in the vicinity of the central Transverse Ranges, southern California. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 92-0354.Matti, J.C., and Morton, D.M. (1993). Paleogeographic evolution of the San Andreas fault system in southern California: A reconstruction based on new cross-fault correlation in Powell, R.E., Weldon, R.E., II, and Matti, J.C., eds, The San Andreas fault system: Displacement, palinspastic reconstruction, and geological evolution: Geological Society of America Memoir 178. The canyon itself is the result of erosion by Mill Creek of the highly fractured rock along this linear fault zone. Because the San Bernardino Mountains are a young, steep and rapidly rising mountain range, erosion rates are extremely high and have been estimated to average as great as per 1,000 years in Mill Creek Canyon on hillside gradients as high as 36 degrees.Binnie, Steven A., Phillips, William M., Summerfield, Michael A., and Fifield, L. Kevin (2007). Tectonic uplift, threshold hillslopes, and denudation rates in a developing mountain range. Geology, v. 35, no. 8, pp. 743-746.
Climate Forest Falls, in common with the rest of California, enjoys a Mediterranean climate, receiving the majority of its precipitation during the winter months, frequently in the form of snow. Temperatures are temperate, reaching average highs in the 80s during the summer, and lows in the 20s during the winter. Precipitation is higher than in the adjacent valleys and averages more than per year. Summer thunderstorms occasionally occur, particularly in the later part of the season. The amount of snow received during winter months largely depends on the area of Forest Falls under consideration, as the community extends over an elevation range of approximately . Upper Canyon, as it is locally known, that is, the eastern higher-elevation end of the community, receives on average twice the amount of snow fall as Lower Canyon. Snowfall varies, but on occasion as much as six to seven feet has been recorded, the most on average however is around one to two feet sporadically throughout the winter.http://www.rssweather.com/wx/us/ca/forest%20falls/wx.php Weather Forecast for Forest Falls, California.http://weather.yahoo.com/united-states/california/forest-falls-2405075/ the weather for Forest Falls on yahoo
See also Valley Fire
References
External links Valley of the Falls Community Center Forest Home