San Timoteo Canyon Schoolhouse

About this property

San Timoteo Canyon is a river valley canyon southeast of Redlands, in the far northwestern foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. The canyon runs from its southern inflow mouth in Beaumont in Riverside County, in a northwest alignment, to its northern outflow mouth west of Redlands and east of Loma Linda in San Bernardino County. San Timoteo Creek formed the canyon, and flows northwest through it to its confluence with the Santa Ana River, being a tributary of it. The creek drains the Banning Valley west of the San Gorgonio Pass water divide, and the watersheds of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains that feed into it. The canyon was part of the winter homeland of the Serrano people for thousands of years. There were hot springs in the area. The San Bernardino de Sena Estancia was established in 1819 as a ranch outpost Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, for the grazing of cattle by the Mission Indians. The original buildings grew to include a chapel, tile kiln, lime kiln, and a grist mill. The canyon was part of Rancho San Bernardino, the 1842 Mexican land grant by Alta California Governor Juan B. Alvarado to José del Carmen Lugo, José María Lugo, Vicente Lugo, and Diego Sepulveda. === Irving Gang, Cahuilla posse, and American militia === On the 27th day of May, 1851, Juan Antonio, the Californian Native American chief of the Mountain Cahuilla band, with a group of his tribesmen pursued and fought the Irving Gang of John "Red" Irving and his San Francisco and Sydney outlaws in San Timoteo Canyon. Irving's band of raiding thieves had robbed people and stolen property throughout the San Bernardino Valley, including on Rancho San Bernardino where Juan Antonio's Cahuilla village at Politana was located. Acting on the orders of the local Justice of the Peace, the Californio owner of the rancho and whose house the Irving Gang were robbing at the time, the Cahuilla attacked and pursued them into San Timoteo Canyon, where in a running fight they killed eleven of the twelve men in the gang after they refused to surrender. There were decades of precedent for the Mountain Cahuilla who working on the local ranchos, tracking and hunting down bandits and other tribe's raiders was a service they were requested for in the San Bernardino region, during the 1822–1846 Mexican rule in Alta California. With this 1851 order, they were still authorized to carry out legally requested local law enforcement actions, now within the year old U.S. state. However some newly arrived American settlers to Southern California and the area resented the killing of "white men" by "indians" and mistook it to be the beginning of a Mission Indian uprising. A company of militia from the Presidio of San Diego was sent against the Cahuilla. At the time, present day San Bernardino and Riverside Counties were within San Diego County, and served by troops based at the presidio. Juan Antonio's Cahuilla band fled Politana, going to their homelands in the San Jacinto Mountains. The American leader of the militia, Major General Joshua Bean, discovered the truth about the events and with difficulty restrained his troops from attacking the Cahuilla, preventing a battle and massacre.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Riverside County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Riverside County.

More historic places in California

Browse all historic places in California.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

California history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.