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6 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2020 By Ricardo Suárez-Gärtner, Resident South of our neighborhood, Highland Springs Avenue becomes a rough road that fades into a bushland heaven for coyotes, rattlesnakes, and jackrabbits. Off-roading motorcyclists or trigger-happy target shooters roaming the area might be an occasional annoyance. Otherwise, it appears nothing much seems to be there, between our homes and the town of San Jacinto. But we are very wrong. The place is full of memories. After moving to Beaumont three years ago, I began to dig a little into the history of my new hometown. Anecdotes started to surface about native inhabitants, Spanish land grants, and pioneer settlers. There were stories about a "New Deal" mega project and even a secret installation from the Cold War era. Evidently, this wilderness was once quite a buzzing hub! Hundreds of grinding stones attest to the early presence of Wanikik Cahuilla people in scattered villages between Beaumont and Whitewater Canyon. At a later date, invading Temecula Indians drove the Soboba tribe from the San Jacinto Valley to the north hills. There, the retreating Sobobas were trapped in a steep ravine, and many were killed. "Massacre Canyon" lies just three miles from the location of other events in this tale. In Spanish Colonial days, a 48,000-acre land grant called "San Joaquín Nuevo y Rancho Potrero" was assigned to the San Luis Rey Mission. The post-independence Mexican government confiscated the land and bestowed it to Miguel Pedrorena in the mid-1800s. When he passed away, the grant was auctioned off. José Antonio Aguirre acquired Rancho Potrero's parcel of 1,000 acres, but his successors lost it in a lawsuit instated by the Pedrorena heirs. A few years later, Joseph Wolfskill married into the Pedrorena family and acquired the rights to the property. He established a successful cattle ranch on the site. The access road from Banning bears his name. When he built a new ranch house in the late 1800s, Wolfskill cut a track to Beaumont to bring the building materials. That trail became "Highland Springs Road." Later on, in the middle of the Great Depression, the expanding city of Los Angeles pushed plans to bring water from the Colorado River. The ambitious project included a 16 foot-square, 13-mile long tunnel under Mount San Jacinto. Two vertical shafts had to be sunk near the ends of the main canal at Cabazon and Potrero Ranch to facilitate construction. Highland Springs Road was widened for the excavation. Blasting began in May 1933. The underground waterway was completed in History in our Backyard continued on following page

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