History of San Bernardino, California
Missionary priest Father Francisco Garcés entered the valley in 1774, as did the de Anza Expedition, though not in present-day San Bernardino but further south.
The expedition of Antonio Armijo first established the trade of the Old Spanish Trail between Nuevo Mexico and Mission San Gabriel in Alta California in 1829–1830.
After the Mission system was dismantled by the Mexican government in 1833, several prominent Southern Californians attempted to acquire Rancho San Bernardino.
On June 21, 1842, Rancho San Bernardino was granted to Antonio Maria Lugo, his sons and his nephews, who grazed approximately 4000–6000 cattle in the area.
Don Lorenzo Trujillo brought the first colony of settlers from New Mexico to settle on land provided by the Lugos about one half mile south of the Indian village of La Politana.
These colonists included William Workman, John A. Rowland (later owners of Rancho La Puente) and Benjamin Davis Wilson.
In 1845, the Salazar colonists too moved to the Santa Ana River, one mile northeast of La Placita and there founded the village known as Agua Mansa.
To replace the New Mexicans as guardians of their herds, the Lugos brought Mountain Cahuilla tribesmen under their leader, Juan Antonio, to settle in Politana.
Due to the ill feeling among the American population resulting from this incident, shortly afterward the Cahuilla moved east to a new rancheria at Saahatpa in the San Gorgonio Pass near Banning, California.
[4]: 101–105 Also in 1843, Michael White (also known in Spanish as Miguel Blanco), a Mexican citizen of English origin, was granted Rancho Muscupiabe, named after the Serrano village Amuscupiabit, "Place of little pines."
Michael White built a house overlooking the Cajon Pass, but Native Americans from the desert stole his grazing stock, and he abandoned the Rancho after nine months.
A detachment of the Los Angeles troops, led by Captain Jefferson Hunt was stationed at the southern end of the Cajon Pass to protect Mexican ranchos from Indian raids.
He co-owned a mountain sawmill, started the original Bank of San Bernardino, and helped establish the Home of Eternity Cemetery.
Young was probably headed there all along as demonstrated by a vanguard shipload of Mormons organized by Samuel Brannan who had already arrived in San Francisco from New York and were waiting for the main party there.
Young, who had authorized the venture, undermined the San Bernardino operation almost from the beginning and guaranteed its failure and the financial loss of the investors by calling them back just before the mortgage was paid off, depressing the value of the real estate as they all rushed to sell.
The remaining residents lacked organization and resources to compensate for the mass departure of the predominant Mormon population, which devastated the local economy.
In the days before air travel, it was marketed to Hollywood stars like Loretta Young, Mary Pickford, Spencer Tracy, and Humphrey Bogart.
This railroad, soon renamed the Los Angeles and Salt Lake, (LA&SL) used as its corporate logo an adaptation of the famous "arrowhead" natural feature located north of the city.
It featured both light and grand opera, plays, musicians, and touring performances by such people as by Maude Adams, Lillian Russell, Al Jolson, and Sarah Bernhardt.
The land was not suitable for agriculture and the San Manuels lived in poverty until the opening of Indian Bingo in 1986, and the later casino and water bottling plant in the 1990s and 2000s.
The Depression and the Dust Bowl caused a wave of migrants from Oklahoma and Arkansas to arrive in San Bernardino to work the fields in and around the City.
According to former mayor Bob Holcomb, the city getting the CSU campus was a concrete outcome of a successful fight with the Metropolitan Water District (MWD), of which San Bernardino was a founding member.
This put additional pressure on downtown, a factor that continues to today, but allows San Bernardino to compete regionally for office space and tax dollars.
Coupled with the recession of the early 1990s, the closing of Kaiser Steel in 1985, and Santa Fe Railroad's relocation of jobs to Topeka caused San Bernardino's economy to slide.
Stater Bros. Markets, a Fortune 1000 supermarket, began construction mid 2006 on a large scale distribution plant to replace the existing Grand Terrace location.
According to the impartial analysis prepared by the City Attorney's Office, much of the initiative, even if passed, would have probably been ruled unconstitutional or would have been preempted by federal or state law.
Later, Superior Court Judge A. Rex Victor disqualified the measure from the ballot after the City filed a declaratory relief action based on a challenge by local attorney Florentino ("Tino") Garza.
After the defeat, Turner vowed to bring a new, harsher measure to the ballot, and he mounted an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to replace Clark-Mendoza, herself, as City Clerk by arguing that her alleged incompetence and/or corruption resulted in: uncollected tax revenues; unlicensed home rentals; and, absentee landlords that were lowering property values across the entire city.
On December 2, 2015, husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik committed a terrorist attack at the Center, which resulted in 14 deaths and 22 injuries.
[13][14][15][16][17] The shooters reportedly targeted an event for employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, held in an auditorium with about 80 people.
