The Mormons In the IE....A tale of murder, gold, greed and Indian wars.

Mormon Leader Brigham Young declared in 1851 that the church desired a west coast port city to shorten the route overland for European converts and a trading city to the far east.
Thus in March 1851 the first group of Mormon settlers bound for California left Utah....Almost three months later the group arrived at the top of the Cajon Pass....There they decided to stop for a while and fix anything broken and wait for another party to join them from Arkansas.....While waiting they continued to have church services and school for the children and also did a lot of gold mining in the upper Cajon and Lyttle creek areas....No mentioned in the history books is made of how much or if any gold was discovered.
In late August the group of almost 1,000 Mormons descended down through the pass and making camp where the present day campus of San Bernardino State is located.....In September, after some negations with the Spanish Missionaries and the Don Lugo Family, the Mormons bought Rancho San Bernardino for $77,500....The sale being made entirely of credit of future sales of farm products.
The Lugo Family removed thousands of head of cattle and horses, leaving 75 cattle for the Mormons to divide amongst the families....As a result, the local high desert Indians who now had no fear of the Mexican cowboys since they were gone, began a series of raids into the Mormon Encampment.....It was decided to build a fort to protect the Mormons from Indian attacks.
The boundaries of the fort were quite large....The western Boundary was near present day D street, the southern boundary was at about third, the eastern side of the fort extended all of the way to B street and the northern section was about present day 4 street....The Mormons would build wooden homes in single file long the fence line....So you would have a house then a section of upright timbers marking the fort wall, another house and so forth, with large gates on the north and southern ends. The Mormons laid out all of the streets inside the fort as we still see them today.
The Mormons would take in any traveler, Spanish, or Indian that felt threatened by the Indians....Several large ranches surrounded the fort and during those times of Indian attacks, the ranchers would drive there herds to the fort, leave them out side so that they could graze while they took sanctuary inside the fort.
In 1857, Brigham Young, recalled the Mormons to Utah....He felt they were doing to well and not paying enough to the church....So many Mormons heeded the recall that nearly 75 percent of the city was deserted as a result....The previous year the Mormons had gotten the city Incorporated....Because of the recall, officials in LA felt that the city of san Bernardino no longer existed....It was dis-incorporated in 1858.
Also on 1857, the Fort Tejon Earthquake occurred....By today's standards it was rated as a 7.9 to a 8.3....Almost all of the buildings in Mormon Camp were damaged....fortuneally no deaths occurred in san Bernardino, but two deaths did occur in other parts of the IE.
Many people think that the Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred in the deserts right in the area of Mountain Meadows at Mt Pass just before the current day Nevada state Line....In actuality it occurred in Utah, by Mormons dressed as Indians who on the orders of Brigham Young swept down on a Wagon Train whose Wagon Master had refused to go to Utah first....The party had stopped to dig for gold along the way and had found several thousand dollars worth of gold that they planned on using in California to buy land....They had no intention of Paying off the church Leadership....As a result the party was wiped out except for 17 small children who were sold into slavery within the Mormon Church.
All of the gold and all of there other possessions, there stock and the wagons not destroyed by the raid were taken back to Utah....There bodies left to rot in the sun until a US government Agent sent out by the White House to find out exactly what had happened to the party.
As a result of his investigation the US declared war upon the Mormons....The remaining Mormons in San Bernardino broke away from the Main church altogether and created a new Mormon Church that was in compliance with California and Federal laws.
Gary Hall the ghostpainter