2016 marks the 70th anniversary of the most extraordinary year in Idyllwild’s history. 1946 saw the birth of such landmark institutions as the Town Crier, Idyllwild Mountain Inn, Town Hall, Sportland recreation center, Foster Lake, Desert Sun School, Fern Valley Corners, Community Presbyterian Church, Hidden Lodge ski resort and Idyllwild’s own telephone exchange. I’ve written…
Fifteen years ago this month, a group of local residents created the Idyllwild Area Historical Society, dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing evidence of our past. The society now has a loyal base of nearly 300 memberships scattered across the country, its own wholly owned museum campus, and a growing collection containing some 10,000 documents,…
Our beloved Strawberry Valley hasn’t always been the main tourist attraction in the San Jacinto Mountains. Between 1915 and 1924, the Idyllwild Inn had strong, and at times superior, competition from Tahquitz Lodge, located 6 miles down the Hill at Keen Camp. While Idyllwild tended to draw from the coastal cities, Inland Empire residents actually…
After I mentioned the George Thomas Cedar last month, a reader asked about another local landmark, the A.C. Lovekin Cedar. Though not so old and massive as the Thomas tree, it stood beside Tahquitz Drive near the Strawberry Creek bridge until 2007. Then Southern California Edison deemed its dead carcass a hazard and decapitated it,…
November 1957: Idyllwild had never seen anything like it. According to the Town Crier, the village was “a mass of uprooted trees, torn roofs, broken lines, crushed cars and splintered wood.” Six houses caught fire, 11 cars were crushed, electrical and phone services were down for days. A national forest survey estimated 300 to 500…
One of my favorite bits of mountain lore is the sad saga of Charles Beverly Hughes. Eldest son of a clergyman in the mountains of West Virginia, 37-year-old Hughes left home after his mother’s death. Heading west early in 1905 to seek his fortune, he settled in Banning. That seemed to be an odd choice….
I appreciate the walkable convenience of one-stop shopping at the post office, food markets, bank, pharmacy and library, all situated in and around Strawberry Plaza. On the other hand, viewed from surrounding mountain ridges, this asphalt patch is one of the most prominent scars on the forest landscape, out of keeping with the overall character…
As Idyllwild took shape and acquired its unique culture between 1920 and 1960, three developers played central roles. Two are well-known. Claudius Lee Emerson controlled downtown and lower Strawberry Valley until 1936 and Frank Strong and George Dickinson’s firm continued to develop Fern Valley and South Ridge into the post-war era. The third, Gerald “Jerry”…
Some 32 summer camps have now been documented in the Idyllwild area since 1920. But Idyllwild Institute-Fiesta stands out for its oddly nondescript name. This was a program to cultivate leadership and patriotism in high school girls enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. Given the tendency of JROTC to attract disproportionate numbers of…
Not long ago, my wife was cleaning up an old framed, hand-tinted photograph of a nondescript desert scene, a piece we’d inherited from my parents years ago. Because my father loved the desert, I assumed this was merely a personal memento of times he’d spent as a teenager visiting relatives at Mecca. Yet it had…
