Travis Mason is the acting district ranger for the San Jacinto Ranger District (SJRD). He began his tour Jan. 3 and is the latest in a series of “acting district rangers” since Julie Hall left for the Inyo National Forest a year ago. Mason has spent much of his U.S. Forest Service career (more than…
According to the San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF), Garner Valley is the site of pile burning in the next few weeks. The wet weather has delayed the planned burns, which were scheduled for last week, in the Cranston Reforestation Project, according to Lauren Blake, forest fuels prevention officer for the SNBF. “Administrative sites like the…
Last week, the Town Crier reported on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors asking the county executive and its legal staff to develop recommendations to cope with the dramatic dismissal of criminal cases before they could come to trial. The Riverside County Superior Court issued some comments about the situation last week. District Attorney Michael…
A Joshua Tree man was sentenced to two years in prison for a fatality that occurred in 2021 on Highway 243. On Jan. 31, Nathan Daniel McConnell, 40, pleaded guilty to gross vehicle manslaughter and reckless driving causing serious injury on May 9, 2021. McConnell was driving northbound on Highway 243, north of Miller Ranch…
Pine Cove Property Owners The Pine Cove Property Owners Association will meet at 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 4 at the Pine Cove Water District meeting room. The speaker will be Bill Tell speaking on the Emergency Siren System planned for the Hill.
It is too soon to know whether the drought has been eradicated or simply diminished. But the rain that fell across the state this month has resulted in the state being able to substantially increase State Water Project allocations. While this will have little effect on the Hill, it is an indication that water supplies…
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that, in persons who had previously received two to four monovalent vaccine doses, early results show that the new bivalent nRNA booster dose provides additional protection against symptomatic XBB/XBB.1.5 infection for at least the first three months after vaccination. The CDC continues to rate Riverside County among the…
Assembly Bill (AB) 257, the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act or FAST Recovery Act, enacted in September 2022, is on hold until the November 2024 election. AB 257 creates a 10-person council to set rules for chains with 100 or more restaurants nationally. It can set the minimum wage for fast-food workers with…
Throughout their lives, all of the people in this annual tribute were connected to Idyllwild. And because these are such small communities, many of the names that appear in Town Crier obituaries have appeared in past pages of the Town Crier when those people were alive. In that sense, they live on in the written…
Should we be worrying? Dear Editor: It’s Thursday, Jan. 26, and the weatherman says we may have 75 mph wind gusts in their wind warning. SCE (Edison) has been doing its fire prevention tree trimming for years now and I’ve always appreciated it; never gave it much thought. But looking up yesterday at the giant…
