Comings and goings in Banning often amounted to coming and going. Located in the San Gorgonio Pass between Mt. San Gorgonio and Mt. San Jacinto, the city was once a way station for stagecoach travelers, as well as a midway rest stop for motorists making the trip between Riverside and Palm Springs. The headquarters crews that built the Colorado River Aqueduct made longer stopovers. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. bivouacked his tanks in the deserts east of Banning to train prior to their deployment in North Africa's Sahara to fight the Second World War. But many stayed in Banning, too, and ranched...

San Timoteo Canyon, known locally as "the canyon," has always been a major thoroughfare for the area. Once a favorite passage for desert tribes traveling to the sea to trade their wares, it was also used as the main corridor for wagon teams coming from the San Gabriel Mission en route to the Salton Sea to harvest precious salt. Stagecoach lines later traversed the canyon from Los Angeles to Arizona, requiring the establishment of stagecoach stops in the San Timoteo Canyon and elsewhere. Wyatt Earp was one of the most famous stagecoach drivers to pass through the canyon. Later the "Iron Horse"...

For years, the plateau cradled between Mount San Gorgonio in the San Bernardino Mountain Range and Mount San Jacinto in the San Jacinto Mountain Range was called Summit, because it was the highest point in the San Gorgonio Pass. The Southern Pacific Railroad built a small red station at that site even before it was a town. A real estate boom followed, and the town's name metamorphosed from Summit to San Gorgonio to Beaumont. A real estate bust occurred in the late 1980s and eventually ebbed, allowing growth to once again rebound. Early years had been synonymous with stagecoach routes that...

Locals know it simply as "the pass"--big enough to include several cities and towns, state parks and Indian reservations, the Colorado Desert and the travels of every golfer, movie star, tycoon, president, camper, trucker, sun-worshiper, and everyday Joe who ever buzzed to and from Palm Springs and Los Angeles. In Riverside County between "Old Grayback," also known as Mount San Gorgonio, rising to 11,804 feet on the north in the San Bernardino Range, and Mount San Jacinto topping out at 10,804 feet to the south, the people down inside the San Gorgonio Pass have seen them all come and go, from...

Nestled in one of Southern California's deep mountain passes, Cherry Valley has long been heralded for its pastoral beauty. The Cahuilla Indians were the first to inhabit the area, followed by Gold Rush settlers. In 1853, Dr. Isaac Smith built the first ranch here, which was later used by the Butterfield Overland Stage as a stop between San Bernardino and Yuma, Arizona. Smith's Station, as the ranch was known, became an important link for passenger and mail service between Southern California and the rest of the nation, slowly developing into a successful hotel and eventually a resort. The...

Through four generations, back to 1906 when German patriarch Albert Ecke originally settled in California, the Ecke Ranch name has been synonymous with the crimson poinsettia. With the transplanting of the Ecke business into the heart of the sleepy township of Encinitas in 1923, the area became known as the "Flower Capital of the World." Now a diverse 20-year-old city embracing five distinct communities, the "split personality" of the area reveals itself as an eclectic mix of suburban and rural, historic and contemporary, laid-back and energetic. Nestled between the Batiquitos Lagoon to the...

The original inhabitants of Moreno Valley were Native Americans, the Cahuilla and Shoshone. Rock drawings and granite metate bowls used to grind acorns can still be found in this area. This was the setting found by the early Spanish explorers. The first small town to appear in the valley was Alessandro, built in 1888 along old Highway 395, a mile or so south of Alessandro Boulevard and extending a short distance east to what later became Alessandro Flying Field. As agriculture in the area increased water demands, severe drought caused a decrease in the water supply, and a few years later, the...