Forest Falls, California

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.[6] 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.[7] They returned to the warmer valleys at the base of the mountains in the autumn after gathering acorns, a staple of their diet.[8]

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.[9]

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.[10] 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.[11]

In 1897, California pioneer Richard Jackson patented one hundred and sixty acres[12] and built Forest Home Resort, ferrying guests by stagecoach from the train in Redlands.[13] 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.[14] Forest Home Resort operated under the succeeding ownership of Cyrus Baldwin,[15] Reverend Frank Culver and then his son Frank Culver, Jr.,[16] 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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20] 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.[21]

Forest Falls is situated in the San Bernardino Mountains of California, at elevations ranging from approximately 5,000 feet (1,500 m) to 6,000 feet (1,800 m) along the steep gradient of Mill Creek, a tributary of the Santa Ana River. It lies 75 miles (121 km) due east of the Los Angeles Civic Center, and 21 miles (34 km) from San Bernardino, the nearest large city and the county seat. The community stretches for approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) 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 11,503 feet (3,506 m), 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.

• Valley Fire