San Bernardino, CA news and local guide

The Tongva had several villages in the San Bernardino Valley. The most important, Kaawchama on the Santa Ana River, was a trading center linked by the Mohave Trail to peoples as far as the Colorado River. After Mission San Gabriel was founded in 1771, missionaries set up a supply station at the Guachama Rancheria, also called Politana. Founded in 1810 as a mission chapel and named for Bernardino of Siena, it was the first Spanish settlement in the valley. Local people destroyed it two years later, after strong earthquakes, but the Serrano and Mountain Cahuilla rebuilt the rancheria and in 1819 invited the missionaries back to found the San Bernardino de Sena Estancia. In 1842 the land became part of the Rancho San Bernardino grant of the Jose del Carmen Lugo family.

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In 1851 Latter-day Saint pioneers founded the first Anglo-American colony and laid out the town on the Mormon "City of Zion" plan, farming with irrigation and cutting lumber for Southern California. San Bernardino County was formed in 1853, and the city was incorporated in 1857. That year Brigham Young recalled most of the colonists because of the Utah War. Investors from El Monte and Los Angeles bought up the rancho lands and sold them to newcomers, saloons opened, and fighting and violence grew common, climaxing in the Ainsworth-Gentry Affair of 1859. A gold rush began in the nearby mountains in 1860. Sources Wikipedia: San Bernardino, California