Day 3 - Hemet to Camarillo

You can see the pictures I took today, or you can see a map showing where the pictures were taken. (HINT: Select the satellite view to get a sense of the route that the expedition was following when there were no developed highways)

The expedition’s route followed along the base of the San Jacinto mountain range in a northwesterly direction.  They traveled though some of the mountain valleys in Ramona – appropriately named after the Spanish heroine in Helen Hunt Jackson’s 19^th Century novel – which is usually considered as the tragic example of the society that Anza and those who followed him developed in California. Unlike Ramona’s family, and unlike other Spanish and Mexican immigrants into California, Anza appears to have had fairly cordial relationships with the Native Americans that he encountered in his voyages to California.  Perhaps it was Fray Font’s influence that helped the Anza expedition treat the natives they encountered with respect.

After leaving the Anza Valley area the route of the expedition closely followed the current Ramona Expressway and traveled up Berlusconi Pass and through a saddle in the mountains out onto the plain that is now Lake Perris.

Lake Perris is part of the California Water Project – the terminal end where water from Lake Oroville ends up if it is not used on the way down the San Joaquin Valley, through the Los Angeles Basin and on into Riverside County.  The earth and rock fill dam overlooks the valley floor where tens of thousands of residents must go to bed every night and think about the St. Francis Dam collapse in 1928 in Los Angeles, the greatest civil engineering catastrophe in U.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam, accessed 3/16/2014). In fact, according to the ranger in the museum at Lake Perris, some cracks were noticed in the dam several years ago, and there is currently an effort being made to shore up the dam.

There was supposed to be a marker at Lake Perris documenting the passage of the Anza Expedition through the area.  It was supposed to be at the south end of the Lake where the saddle in the hills, which can be seen in one of the photographs taken there, is located  I went t to that area an d wandered through the campground and could not find it.  So I drove to the entrance at the other end of the lake and asked the attendant at the entry station if she new anything abut the Anza Expedition marker.  That drew a blank expression and her comment, “I don’t even know who Anza is.”  So I went on in to look around, spotted the museum and went there.  I talked to Ranger Jack and he explained that the plaque used to be over on the other side where I had been looking, but as the reservoir rose it was  moved over and re-installed at the base of the flagpole about 20 feet from the gate where I had entered and initially asked about it.

As the expedition crossed over what is now the lake, it dropped down towards the Santa Ana rive which runs through the town of Riverside.  The Santa Ana rive cuts a sep swath through riverside, but at one point, “the narrows”, the expedition made it across – another remarkable feet for man and beast.  The site is now in a park called the Martha McClain and Anza Narrows Park.  The park is very nice and includes a bike path that runs along the bluff above the river, a monument with a plaque marking the Anza Crossing, and another monument commemorating the fact that the trails in the park have been include in the National River Trails System, administered by the Department of the Interior.  I had never herd of that before.

After crossing the Santa Ana, the expedition continued its southwesterly movement along the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains.  The route parallels IS 10 end arrives at the San Gabriel Mission where I arrived about 3:00 p.m. I had not been at that mission since I was 13 or 14 years old when I would go the Mission Playhouse, named after but not a part of, the Mission. That is where I would go with my parents and learned to enjoy Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Bach (well, maybe not Bach so much).  It is also the sight of the famous Mission Play which I don’t think I ever went to, but would like to

I arrived at the mission just as a group of Spanish-Mexican era reenactors were packing up their gear after some kind of celebration of the Anza expedition. They were all dressed in period costumes, but by the time I got there they were all packing up and heading back home, so I did not get any pictures.

The route of the expedition trough Los Angeles and up the coast is not marked by anything more than an occasional Anza Trial sign on the freeway – 210 to 134 to 101. The route seems to have taken a somewhat more northerly direction through the Santa Monica mountains down into the Simi Valley area, rather than the route through the Cahuenga Pass - the site of the final battle of the Mexican War in California - which goes down into the San Fernando Valley.  The route continued is a southwesterly path finally meeting the coast a few miles above Oxnard.

The driving guide I am using did mention, however, a Juan de Anza park in Calabasas. In that area the expedition was traveling through the Santa Monica mountains as they approached the coast. I went to the Juan De Anza park and thee was a nice plaque at the park entrance, but nothing else. I spoke to the city employee who was there on the Sunday afternoon and he said that thee is noting more than the name of the park and no identified historic spots that he was aware of in the park. 

I returned to US101 and continued north to Camarillo. That is about the point where the expedition’s route met the Pacific Ocean. There I spent the night.