Take a 'monumental' tour of Cajon Pass

Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail Monument (parks.ca.gov)

Mark Landis, Correspondent
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

For centuries, the Cajon Pass has been a primary corridor into Southern California, and a series of little-known monuments commemorate the pioneers who blazed the trails over the rugged mountain barrier.

There are nine unique monuments set in historic locations throughout the Cajon Pass. Each one tells a story of the hardships and triumphs faced by the pioneers who made the difficult journey.

The routes through the Cajon Pass began as simple footpaths used by Indians traveling from the inland deserts to the coastal regions of Southern California.

The first white explorer to travel through the Cajon Pass was most likely Spanish military Captain Pedro Fages in 1771, who was leading a band of soldiers hunting for deserters.

Other famous explorers including Padre Francisco Garces and mountain man Jedediah Strong Smith followed various routes through the Cajon Pass.

The most prominent group of settlers that traveled through the pass was a party of 500 Mormons who came by wagon train from Utah in June 1851. The task of hauling their heavy wagons down the steep slopes of the Cajon Pass was the final test of their grueling 400-mile journey.

The monuments are spread throughout the Cajon Pass, and all but three are easily accessible by car. Those that are accessible can be seen in an enjoyable afternoon road trip.

Stoddard-Waite Monument: The first monument set in the Cajon Pass was dedicated May 18, 1913 to commemorate the early pioneers who came by horseback and wagon train through the passage. Sheldon Stoddard and Sidney P. Waite, two of the most well-known pioneers who traveled through the pass in 1849 were honored attendees.

This spire-shaped monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 578, was placed along the former Santa Fe/Salt Lake Trail. It is located in a thick grove of Cottonwood trees near the CHP truck scales on the southbound I-15, about three-quarters of a mile south of Highway 138. The monument is on private property owned by the San Bernardino County Museum, and is only accessible by special permission.

Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail Monument: A second monument of similar size and shape was erected in 1917 just a few hundred yards northeast of the Stoddard-Waite Monument. A festive ceremony was held to dedicate the monument, once again attended by pioneers who had traveled the early wagon roads.

The concrete spire, listed as California State Historic Landmark No. 576, is located at the end of Wagon Wheel Road (south of McDonalds), just east of the northbound I-15 CHP truck scales.

Sycamore Grove Monument: This large spire-shaped monument was built in 1927 to mark the site of the 1851 Mormon camp at Sycamore Grove, known today as Glen Helen. The 500 Mormon settlers camped here while the leaders of their party negotiated the purchase of Rancho San Bernardino.

This monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 573, is located just inside the grounds of Glen Helen Park, on Glen Helen Parkway, .8 mile south of Cajon Boulevard.

Mohave Trail Monument: The Mohave Trail Monument was set on Sept. 19, 1931, on a remote mountaintop northeast of Devore, fittingly named Monument Peak. This small stone and mortar monument was placed by the San Bernardino County Historical Society to commemorate the explorers and frontiersmen who traveled this ancient footpath.

A 4-wheel drive vehicle is required to reach the 5,290-feet elevation Monument Peak site. Take Palm Avenue north from the I-215 until the paved road ends and becomes Bailey Canyon Road. The 5.9-mile trip up the dirt road can be readily found on Google Maps. The monument is located at GPS coordinates: 34 14'43.95"N, 117 21'12.33"W.

Mormon Trail Monument: A modest stone and mortar monument topped by a wagon wheel was built in the West Cajon Valley by the Sons of Mormon Pioneers, and dedicated on May 15, 1937. A small, weathered plaque commemorates the Mormon settlers who passed through this area in 1851. The monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 577, is located on Highway 138, 4.2 miles west of I-15.

Pioneer Women Monument: On April 16, 1977, this simple concrete and marble monument was placed near the former Mormon campsite of Sycamore Grove to commemorate pioneer women. The plaque is a memorial to the hardships the pioneer women faced as they traveled across the untamed country by ox team and covered wagon.

The monument is located on Glen Helen Parkway at the onramp to the northbound 1-15 freeway.

Mormon Pioneer Trail: This small stone and mortar monument was placed in July 1985 to commemorate the wagon train of 500 Mormon settlers who passed by the site in 1851.

The monument is located on the Old Salt Lake Trail near the 1912 Stoddard-Waite Monument and is accessible only by permission.

Blue Cut: This large concrete monument was erected alongside old Route 66 in a narrow gap of the Cajon Pass known as Blue Cut. The monument, dedicated July 23, 1994, was placed by the Billy Holcomb Chapter of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus. The inlaid brass plaque describes the explorers and immigrants who blazed the trails and roads through the pass, as well as some of the historic events that occurred in the area.

To reach this monument, exit I-15 at Kenwood Avenue and go south to Cajon Boulevard (old Route 66). Turn right onto Cajon Boulevard and go 3.7 miles north. Look for the monument on the left in a wide turnout area, set back among the shade trees.

Summit Train Station Monument: This carved marble monument was placed near the site of the Summit Train Station in 1996 by the Hesperia Recreation and Park District. The weathered text carved into the marble commemorates the site of the Summit Train Station on the Santa Fe Railway, and the nearby site of the Elliot Ranch settled in 1927.

The monument also is near the entrance to Horse Thief Canyon where thousands of stolen horses were driven through this section of the Cajon Pass in the 1800s.

The monument is located in Summit Valley on Highway 138, 4 miles east of I-15 on the north side of the road. It is part of a series of monuments placed by the Hesperia Recreation and Park District to commemorate historic sites in the area.

Plaque part of 'Clampers' philosophy

Route 66
Part 6 of an ongoing series

By Claudia Heller
Pasadena Star-News

The Honorable and Ancient Order of E. Clampus Vitus, Platrix Chapter has dedicated a plaque honoring the Ross Field, U.S. Army Balloon School, which once stood on land that later became a portion of Route 66. (Alan Heller)

E Clampus Vitus.

Just the sound of it is intimidating, conjuring up visions of a horrible disease or perhaps a fraternity of enlightened scientists.

Neither apply. It is a men's organization with dual personalities whose members wear red shirts and funny hats. Some "Clampers" call it a historical drinking society, while others dub it a drinking historical society.

But whatever its secret purpose, it is a name you will find all along California's Route 66. If you see an historical plaque along the Route, it was probably the work of ECV.

One of the recent plaques erected on the Mother Road is located on the Elks Lodge Building on Route 66 (Huntington Drive) and Santa Anita in Arcadia, and is dedicated to the Ross Field U.S. Army Balloon School. Built in 1918, the school served as the training grounds for cadets to learn to observe enemy activity from hot air balloons. During construction, the workers lived in Lucky Baldwin's racing horse stables.

The school trained 60-man ground crews responsible for raising and lowering the balloons, and two-man observation crews. It remained viable until the end of World War I in 1919.

The "Clamper" plaque was dedicated on Sept. 6, 2008, by ECV Platrix Chapter No. 2 of the Ancient & Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus and the Arcadia Elks Lodge No. 2025.

Not far from Route 66, on Aug. 9 this year the Clampers dedicated a plaque honoring the Adams Pack Station located at Chantry Flats in Big Santa Anita Canyon. In 1936, J.P. Steele obtained a special permit to operate a pack station and store at Chantry Flats, an enterprise that flourished until the great floods of 1938 washed much of it away along with 200 cabins in the area. Steele sold what was left after the floods. Although the station changed hands several times, it continued to operate, making it the only remaining packing station in Southern California.

On Aug. 13, 1995, the Clampers erected a plaque in Sierra Madre at Hermosa and Carter avenues honoring the town's wistaria vine, "the world's largest blossoming plant."

On Route 66 in Daggett, near Barstow, you will find an ECV Billy Holcomb Chapter plaque dedicated to the Daggett Garage which "began life in the 1880s at the borax town of Marion." It was later moved to Daggett, where it housed an auto repair shop on the National Old Trails Highway.

Plaques appear along Route 66 from Chicago to the "End of the Route" plaque in Santa Monica. We have many visionaries to thank for providing permanent historical notes which remain long after the remnant has decayed or disappeared. These one-page history books may be found along many roads, most notably on The Mother Road and its environs. Near where Santa Monica Boulevard dead ends at Ocean Boulevard, a brass plaque marks the official end of Route 66, and refers to it as the "Will Rogers Highway," one of the many names the famed highway has been called.

Now we can add five new Route 66 sites to our list: (12) The U.S. Army Balloon School; (13) The Adams Pack Station; (14) The Sierra Madre Wisteria Vine; (15) The Daggett Garage; and (16) the official end of Route 66.

ECV dedicates Desert Training Center monument

Clamper officials pose with pride, after their latest historical monument installation.

D. Westermeyer, BLM
NewsBytes Issue 374

On May 1-3, 2009, the Ancient and Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus, Billy Holcomb Chapter 109, descended upon the small town of Desert Center, California for their annual Spring Clampout event. Four hundred and twelve members in black hats and red shirts adorned with tin badges, buttons and pins gathered to initiate fifty three “Poor Blind Candidates” (PBC’s) into the organization under the reign of Noble Grand Humbug, Rick Gavigan.

For the unknowing, E. Clampus Vitus (members are commonly referred to as Clampers) is a fraternal organization dedicated to the preservation of western heritage that is active in state, local, and county Historical Societies. The Holcomb Chapter has worked with the Bureau of Land Management and the California Department of Transportation to place roadside plaques at--as E. Clampus Vitus describes them--“greater and lesser historical sites within San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

Since October 1969, they have erected and dedicated 109 plaques, including those along parts of the Mojave Road, The Patton Desert Training Center (C.A.M.A.), Route 66, Speed of Light Experiments, various historical buildings and other edifices, local native sites and ruins, and other varied and sundry persons, places and events of historical significance.”

Besides initiating new members during the Clampout, the Clampers erected a concrete monument and brass plaque commemorating the site of the 36th Evacuation Hospital for the Desert Training Center (DTC). Later renamed the California-Arizona Maneuver Area, the training center encompassed an 18,000 square mile area in the Mojave Desert and served as the country’s foremost armor training facility and maneuver area where American soldiers were trained in ground and air combat as well as desert warfare from 1942 to 1944.

The size of the training center made it the largest military installation and maneuver area in the world. It was eventually to become the training ground for more than a million troops in seven armored and thirteen infantry divisions. Major General George S. Patton Jr. was the first Commanding General of the DTC tasked with organizing large scale maneuvers necessary to prepare American soldiers for combat against the German Afrika Korps in the North African desert.

As part of the DTC, the 36th Evacuation Hospital was a 400-bed unit that provided care to sick and wounded soldiers under combat conditions. The unit was instrumental in developing procedures for training doctors and nurses and later served in the Pacific theater of operations where it took part in the New Guinea, Luzon, and Leyte campaigns, the occupation of Japan, and was stationed in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969.

The BLM now manages the majority of the land where the training camps existed. While little remains of the original encampment of the 36th Evacuation Hospital, the layout of streets, tent sites, and patterns of hand-laid rocks for unit insignias can still be seen on the ground.

The site is located along Interstate 10 near the town of Desert Center and can be reached by traveling east of Indio or west of Blythe. The monument is located at the northeast corner at the intersection of Ragsdale and Eagle Mountain Roads at the Eagle Mountain offramp

While visiting the area, please remember that the camp sites are considered Historical Period Archaeological sites eligible for the National Register. The use of metal detectors and the collection of artifacts by individuals are strictly prohibited. Visitors are welcome to walk through the area after parking near the monument or along Eagle Mountain Road but please refrain from driving off the paved roads.

While the BLM completed the required paperwork, environmental review and provide archeological assistance, the Billy Holcomb Chapter was responsible for organizing and funding the monument construction and dedication.

For addition information on the Billy Holcomb Chapter of ECV, visit their website.

Promoting Offbeat History Between the Drinks

Among the sites given plaques by California members of E Clampus Vitus are the grave of the unknown prospector on a lonely stretch of Route 395 near Mono Lake. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

By JESSE McKINLEY
New York Times

TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of the W.P.A. Guide to California.

It is on Page 283 that a reader can find the barest mention of The Order of E Clampus Vitus, one of the oldest and oddest entities in a state known for having a few, a Gold Rush-era organization whose goofball sensibilities are offset by a single, serious pursuit: a tendency to plaque all things historical, an obsession that continues to this day.

With little more than mortar and their ever-present red shirts, the Clampers, as the organization’s members are known, have placed more than 1,000 bronze, wood and granite plaques throughout California, from the remote stretches of coast to mining towns like this one, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

The group’s handiwork appears on roadsides, lakesides and at the sites of former brothels, breweries and ballrooms. Jails and forts have been plaqued, and so have whaling stations. Historical drinks have been commemorated — and, no doubt, imbibed — along with ghost stories, stories of heroism and plenty of tall tales in between.

“It’s a common saying that no one has been able to tell if they are historians that like to drink or drinkers who like history,” said Dr. Robert J. Chandler, a senior historian at Wells Fargo Bank and a proud member of the group’s San Francisco chapter. “And no one knows because no one has been in any condition to record the minutes.”

Whether a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society, the Clampers claim tens of thousands of members in 40 chapters across seven Western states, though nowhere are the group’s strange ways more alive than in California, where members are said to have included Ronald Reagan; John Huston, the film director; and Herb Caen, the famous San Franciscan master of the three-dot journal. Some Clamper membership claims, of course, can be suspect. It is true, however, that many noted historians have been members, as is the current director of the State Office of Historic Preservation.

The group’s specialty is the lesser-known nuggets of history.

“I think these guys felt there were a lot of things that weren’t being covered,” said Michael Wurtz, an archivist at University of the Pacific, whose Clampers archives include photographs, letters and travelogues of trips by past members. “And it’s a whole other type of history. There’s a public element. Rather than the ivy-covered walls, this is the stuff we can go out and touch.”

Take the tiny mountain hamlet of Volcano, Calif. (pop. 101), the site of three plaques, including one devoted to the potent Gold Rush drink known as moose milk. (Mix bourbon, rum and heavy cream. Drink. Do not repeat.)

Or Murphys, a town with wooden sidewalks where the Clampers have erected the Wall of Comparative Ovations, devoted to Californians like John Thompson, a pioneer known as Snowshoe who carried mail over mountain passes, and the saber-toothed tiger that prowled the same territory eons before and was “a formidable adversary.”

Then, there is the pure oddity, like an upside-down house in the eastern town of Lee Vining, built by a long-forgotten silent-film actress named Nellie Bly O’Bryan, who found inspiration for the house in bedtime stories. (The plaque, appropriately enough, is also upside down.)

That the writers of the Works Progress Administration, also charged with chronicling the state’s history, would cross paths with E Clampus Vitus is not surprising. Founded in the 1840s, the Clampers fizzled as the Gold Rush did, but were re-established in San Francisco in the early 1930s, just before the W.P.A. project began.

A few years later, the W.P.A.’s guide to California described the “revived” group as a “gold miners’ burlesque fraternity,” citing its plaque at a tavern in San Francisco favored by Joshua A. Norton — the famed British lunatic who once declared himself the emperor of California. That plaque is now gone, as is the building that housed the saloon, but the local chapter, Yerba Buena, survives.

Even today, the points of interest in the W.P.A. guide to California, published in 1939, shadow those pinpointed by Clampers over the years, like the elegant eastern Sierra fishing hole called Convict Lake (“a pellucid sheet of blue,” according to W.P.A.) and Bodie, a high-desert ghost town that was barely functioning when the W.P.A. guide was published and that the Clampers helped preserve as a state park years later.

For members, the Clampers’ ties to those long-bygone eras — and them that survived ’em — seem to make for potent male bonding in the present day.

“It’s a brotherhood, where men can be men,” said Sid Blumner, a retired economics professor and Clamper since 1969, who has compiled a master list of the group’s plaques.

And sometimes the men act like boys. Established as a parody of more serious minded fraternal groups like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows, the Clampers spoof ceremonial titles. Their chief executive is Sublime Noble Grand Humbug.

The group’s motto is “Credo Quia Absurdum,” or roughly “believe because it is absurd.” (E Clampus Vitus, after all, is meaningless in Latin.) Members raise the money for the plaques and install them in cooperation with localities. “We don’t get paid for this,” said Ron Wells, 43, a carpenter and a Clamper “plaquero,” the man with the mortar. “It’s just something you do in your heart.”

The Clampers thrived in the overnight towns that sprang up after the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848 — the red shirts they wear now are meant to symbolize the red long johns worn by many prospectors. The early members were often the ones with the pans.

“The Clampers were the ones out in the streams freezing their butts off,” said Skip Skyrud, a Clamper historian. “The businessmen in the towns, making the money, they were Masons.”

About 50 modern Clampers met recently on a chilly Saturday morning in Twain Harte, a foothill town of about 2,500, to unveil a plaque recalling its rich history, and have some “doin’s,” as their gatherings are called.

The town, about 150 miles east of San Francisco, was once a crossroads named Bald Rock Ranch, between western mining settlements and those over the Sierra Nevada to the east. It was the birthplace of William Fuller, a Miwuk Indian chief who held powwows there. Several of his descendants still live nearby and were in attendance.

Paying attention to things other than “rich old man’s history” has been a big part of the Clampers’ value, said Milford Wayne Donaldson, the state’s historic preservation officer and a member of the San Diego chapter.

“The kings and queens are recognized, but the king- and queen-makers are not,” Mr. Donaldson said. “And ethnic groups were the backbone of a lot this stuff.”

Wearing a top hat and holding a staff made of manzanita, the chapter’s current noble grand humbug, Scott Nielsen, intoned a lengthy description of the plaque’s significance. Another Clamper, Mike Carbonaro, took up the issue of the town’s odd naming.

To wit: Twain Harte was never home to the Mother Lode authors Mark Twain or Bret Harte. The town’s name was picked by a local woman for her favorite authors and originally had a hyphen. Where it went no one knows, and the Clampers still want to find out.

“Let’s see if we can go find that hyphen,” Mr. Carbonaro shouted to the crowd, each in red and wearing vests adorned with pins, flags and ribbons. “What say the brethren?”

The Clampers roared their traditional word of approval — “Satisfactory!” — and then retired, as is also tradition, to a local bar to plan their next lark.