The Valley of The Bears

The First Americans to visit the valley found it by accident....they were trying to find the Cajon Pass from the upper desert down into the San Bernardino area.....In 1845, there were no trial markers nor road signs telling you which route you were on and how far it ws till the next gas station....The Valley of the Bears was discovered quite by accident by then Sheriff Benjamin Wilson who led his posses into the Yuhaviat Valley with a posse of 20 men.....They were chasing Indians who had been raiding ranches in Riverside.....As they entered the valley, at that time known only to the Indians, they found it swarming with bear.....Thus the valleys name.

Wilson divided his men into two-man teams, no longer interested in chasing Indians....He had found something much more intriguing.....A valley full of Bears and trees....Tall trees....Pinon Pines, Ponderosa and Redwoods......That meant plenty of meat for his men and plenty of trees for new homes ....He divided his men into two 10 man teams to go out and explore the valley and try and count the number of bears they saw....He may have been hungry, but he knew better than to kill off all the animals....He had each team go out, and try to capture as many bear alive as possible.....They ended up with eleven bears caught in one day at the camp all at the same time.....You can imagine what a circus this was, but somehow they managed to keep all of the bear healthy, and released all but one back into the wild....The one they slaughtered and butchered for food and its hide....They did not waste anything.....As Wilson sat by the fire side watching the meat cook he came up with a name for the valley he and his men had discovered.....He named it Big Bear Lake......However, it should be noted that Big Bear Lake is a man-made lake that didn't exist in 1845......The lake Wilson named Big Bear was actually the natural lake at the east end of the valley, now known as Baldwin Lake.

Ben Wilson is not only remembered for giving Big Bear its name, but he went on to become an important figure in Southern California history.....Among his accomplishments, he is remembered as the first mayor of Los Angeles.....He was also a two term California state senator, and he built the first railroad between Los Angeles and San Diego.....Wilson died on March 11, 1878, but before he died, he donated land and buildings for the construction of a college......This new college eventually became the University of Southern California.

A side Note here....One of Ben Wilson's grandchildren was famous World War II General, George S. Patton.....They say Wilson was as wacky as the General was.....One reason both men were so successful at what they did.

Big Bear Lake as we now know It, was created in 1885, when a man by the name of Frank Brown constructed a thin rock dam across the narrow gorge at the west end of Big Bear Valley, about 1/2 mile away from Baldwin Lake......Brown was a Redlands farmer.....He had migrated to Southern California after graduating from Yale in 1876. He and his partner, Edward Judson, found the climate and red soil conditions at the east end of the San Bernardino valley perfect for citrus farming.....In 1881, they purchased 4,000 acres and incorporated the City of Redlands and planted over 40,000 Orange Trees.

Brown spent the next two years on horseback, searching throughout the San Bernardino Mountains for the ideal location for a reservoir. He needed a reliable source of water to supply the thirsty citrus farms in Redlands.....On a cold crisp May morning in 1883, with a light snow gently falling, Frank Brown rode through the area now called the Little Artic circle into Big Bear Valley.....Cold and tired, he led his horse through the lush meadows and pine forests until he reached the narrow gorge at the west end of the valley....When he saw this gorge, Frank Brown had found the east end of the dry area that made up Lake Baldwin.....He decided that this would be the perfect spot for his new dam.

By July of 1883, workers were cutting into the bedrock for the dam's foundation.... The construction of the rock dam was both unique and controversial. .....It was designed as a thin arch dam, 52 feet high, 20 wide at the bottom and tapering to only 3 feet wide at the top......There was a very real concern whether or not such a narrow structure could sustain the enormous pressure of a five-mile long lake. It was made entirely out of three foot rock blocks cut from the surrounding hillside with little cement used to hold the blocks together.....The strength of the dam would come from the shape of the arch.

Without the use of explosives or power tools, the workers cut granite blocks from the hillside, each block weighing three to five tons. The dam was about fifteen feet high when the workers went home for the winter because of early snowstorms.....The winter of 1883 / 1884, was a particularly heavy winter for snowfall....Normally the Big Bear area gets abut 120 inches of snowfall per year....This year over 250 inches of snow fell....When the men returned in the spring to resume work on the dam, they found the valley behind what they had finished full of water and water cascading over the top of the unfinished dam....After an inspection of the dam it was the found that the design had worked....There were no leaks.....And now the men, instead of having to haul the heavy rock by mule across the dry valley, they could now put them on rafts and float them over to the dam on the partially filled lake.....By the fall of 1884, the dam was finished except for the cap across the top.....Early snow again forced the workers to end there work on the dam for season and the workers went home for the winter.

When they came back in the spring, after another heavy winter of snow, they found the dam holding solid with a new 5 mile long lake sitting in the valley where pine trees and green meadows had been the year before.....In just two years, and at a cost of only $75,000, Frank Brown had created at that time, the largest manmade lake in the world......What Frank didn't realize was that he had also created a tourist attraction.

The discovery of gold in 1850, in the mountains around the new lake brought the first significant numbers of people to Big Bear.....Two prospectors, Bill Holcomb and Jack Martin arrived in Big Bear during the dead of winter.....They found the valley covered in snow and set up camp in an area called Starvation Flats, located where the intersection of Stanfield and Big Bear Boulevard is today.

That winter was unusually cold and harsh.....Food was in short supply for the miners at Starvation Flats.....Jack Martin decided to return to Los Angeles for more supplies and Bill Holcomb realizing it would take up to three weeks for Martin to get back up the mountain in the dead of winter went hunting for food.....Holcomb headed north across the valley and climbed up the mountain just west of Bertha Peak where present day highway 18 heads out of the Big Bear Valley into Holcomb Valley......From the top of the ridge he gazed upon a new lush green valley that would eventually bear his name.....He killed two bears, packed his kill on burros and returned to Starvation Flats thus providing enough meat for himself and the other minors in camp until Martin returned from LA.

With a fresh supply of meat at camp, Bill decided to return to the new valley for a couple of days and do a little prospecting....On the May 5th, he set up camp in the main gulch located between the upper and lower parts of Holcomb Valley.....To his amazement, he immediately started finding gold, enough to make him wealthy.

News of Holcomb's find spread quickly, and by July, there were more than 1, 000 men feverishly working their gold claims.....Almost overnight, a town called Belleville sprang into existence almost overnight with a collection of stores, saloons, dance halls, and blacksmith shops.....About the same time, two other towns, Clapboard Town and Uniontown, also appeared in Holcomb Valley.......Holcomb Valley even had its own brewery!

1860 was also an election year, and the population of Holcomb Valley was growing so fast that the voters there would soon outnumber the rest of the county......One of the matters that needed to be decided in the election of 1860 was where the San Bernardino county seat would be located.....Belleville residents felt strongly that the location should be right there in Holcomb Valley even though it was isolated at the eastern end of the San Bernardino Mountains.....When the ballots were counted, the returns from Belleville were missing.....Even so, the city of San Bernardino barely won the contest by only two votes....If not for those missing votes, Holcomb Valley would probably look like San Bernardino does today.

Today The Valley of the Bears, now known as Big Bear Lake, is seven miles long and approximately one mile across at its widest point.....It has a maximum depth of 72 feet and over 22 miles of shoreline.....Lake activities include fishing, water-skiing, jet skiing, sailing, swimming and boating.....Over the past several decades, the lake has actually split in two from dry winters....The last time, in 2003, the lake was so low, that many felt that the city of Big Bear might have to go on water rations.....Then came October of that year when 20 inches of rain fell in 24 hours....By winters end, over 120 inches of rain and 140 inches of snow fell.....The Lake rose 22 feet, filling all 7 miles behind the dam....Lake Arrowhead, also suffering from the effects of 2 years of drought, rose 16 feet that winter, saving the area around it

Big Bear Lake, is surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest, and the valleys altitude ranges from 6,750 to 9,000 feet and is still dominated by pine and oak forests.....The area provides a natural habitat for approximately 30 winter bald eagles and 29 species of rare plants, ten of which are indigenous to the area not to Mentone the bears, Mt Lions and other mammals that live in the area.

Gary Hall the ghostpainter