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8 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | JUNE 2024 By Julie Martin, Resident, Board Member Since we have so many new neighbors, I thought you might enjoy reading about some history of Hemet. e area in which Hemet is located was first inhabited by members of the Cahuilla Indian tribe. en in the early 1800s, it became a cattle ranch for Mission San Luis Rey and named the area Rancho San Jacinto. When the missions were broken up by the Mexican government the land was awarded to Jose Antonia Estudillo in 1842. e City of Hemet owes its inception and initial growth to two ironic events and the dedication of two wealthy men. e first event was the visit Ramona author Helen Hunt Jackson made to the San Jacinto Valley in 1883 to gather material on the Sobobas, a group of Mission Indians living on the east side of the San Jacinto River. Mrs. Jackson was accompanied to the valley by her interpreter, Abbot Kinney. During their visit, Jackson and Kinney stayed at various ranches and met numerous valley and mountain residents, notably Charles omas and Hancock McClung Johnston. omas and Johnston owned ranches in the Jacinto Mountains, and they raised race horses in what was called Hemet Valley. During the years 1891 to 1895, while the great Hemet Dam was being built, the town of Hemet started to take on a look of prosperity. Mayberry built his three-story brick Hotel Mayberry on Florida Ave between Harvard and State streets. Whittier built a warehouse, an opera house, and business shops on North Harvard. In 1893 families and businesses in the town of Hemet were buying domestic water from the Lake Hemet Water company and farmers were using irrigation water on their alfalfa fields, fruit orchards, and crops, particularly potatoes. Despite a severe drought in 1889 – 1900 and a major 1899 Christmas Day earthquake, the town of Hemet continued to prosper. On November 14, 1909, the San Jacinto Valley Register printed a synopsis of a speech by T.S. Brown, a Hemet real estate agent, in which he urged that the town residents vote for incorporation. On January 11, 1910, residents voted to incorporate as a city and Brown was elected Hemet's first mayor. Since 1923 one of the valley's chief claims to fame has been the Annual Ramona Pageant. e incident inspiring Helen Hunt Jackson to write Ramona occurred in the valley, and the production of a pageant based on the story was discussed for several years as a method of promoting the valley. From 1923 onward, the people of Hemet and San Jacinto have joined to stage this outdoor pageant each spring. e character of Hemet began to change dramatically in the early 1960s with the development of Sierra Dawn, the country's first mobile home subdivision in which individual lots were sold. Other mobile home parks and retirement housing developments followed, and Hemet became well-known as a retirement community. Hemet retains today much of the retirement orientation but is also becoming home to significant numbers of younger families who provide services to the senior populations or who are simply fleeing the more urbanized areas of Southern California. e economy is based primarily on services to the senior population and ancillary services such as financial institutions and health care professionals. is information was discovered on the Hemet website. A Little History About Hemet

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