Box Springs Mountain is the highest peak in the

Box Springs Mountains The Box Springs Mountains are a mountain range in northwest Riverside County, California, United States. The highest peak of the range is Box Springs Mountain, which stands just over tall. Parks The Box Spring Mountain Reserve, operated by th ...

range, standing tall. The mountain is in northwestern

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

Geography

The mountain is east of downtown

Riverside Riverside may refer to: Places Australia * Riverside, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania Canada * Riverside (electoral district), in the Yukon * Riverside, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Alberta * Riverside, Manitoba, a former rural m ...

, and northwest of

Moreno Valley Moreno Valley is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and is part of the Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario metropolitan area. It is the second-largest city in Riverside County by population and one of the Inland Empire's po ...

, a partial border between the two large cities. Most of the mountain is part of the Box Springs Mountain Reserve, a park operated by the county.

UC Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

manages the Box Springs Reserve adjacent to its campus, part of the

University of California Natural Reserve System The University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS) is a system of protected areas throughout California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Co ...

. It protects a transitional

ecotone An ecotone is a transition area between two biological communities, where two communities meet and integrate. It may be narrow or wide, and it may be local (the zone between a field and forest) or regional (the transition between forest and gras ...

zone between

coastal sage scrub Coastal sage scrub, also known as coastal scrub, CSS, or soft chaparral, is a low scrubland plant community of the California coastal sage and chaparral subecoregion, found in coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California. It is w ...

and chamise

chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean c ...

. Because the mountain is one of the more prominent features in the

Inland Empire The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the cities o ...

(Riverside-San Bernardino urbanized area), the summit is used for numerous telecommunication towers, including transmission towers for the KOLA 99.9 and KGGI 99.1 radio stations.

History

Box Springs Mountain is said to have gotten its name during the 1880s. Teamsters with horse-drawn wagons would stop at a

natural spring A spring is a point of exit at which groundwater from an aquifer flows out on top of Earth's crust (pedosphere) and becomes surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fresh w ...

in an arroyo of the range to water their horses. A teamster surrounded it with a box to maintain water access, later giving the spring, Box Springs, and the range their names.Holtzclaw, Kenneth M
Images of America: Moreno Valley
Arcadia Publishing, 2007. . The letter "C" is embedded on the Riverside-facing side. The "Big C" was built in 1957, mostly by

students. E.L. Yeager donated the materials for it. The "C" is approximately 1,500 feet above the UCR campus, and was the world's largest poured-concrete block letter, 132 feet high by 70 feet wide. The "C" is often vandalized with

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

. The letter "M" was embedded on the

side of the mountain in 1966 as a symbol of Moreno Valley High School which was then in the town of Sunnymead. The City of Moreno Valley was officially incorporated as a municipality on December 3, 1984 comprising Sunnymead, Edgemont and the little town of Moreno. The mountain with "M" were included on the new city logo. During the first week of December 2009 Moreno Valley and

Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of app ...

lit up the "M" to celebrate the 25th anniversary of cityhood.

Natural history

Box Springs Mountain provides wildlife habitat in the fast-growing

Inland Empire Metropolitan Area The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the cities ...

, with populations of snakes, lizards, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions,deer and burros, some of which wander into the populace below. There are several large eucalyptus trees that were planted at its base that originally marked sources of water. The mountain is susceptible to

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...

s which char the hillsides and pose a danger to residences at the base of the mountain. However, they are a natural part of

fire ecology Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role as an ecosystem p ...

in the chaparral and woodland natural habitats.

References

External links

*
Google Maps Satellite view of Box Springs Mountain showing the large painted concrete letter "C"

Google Maps Satellite view of Box Springs Mountain showing the large painted letter "M"
{{Geographic location , Centre =Box Springs Mountains , North = Redlands , Northeast = Yucaipa , East = Yucaipa , Southeast = Mentone , South =

, Southwest =

, West =

Grand Terrace Grand Terrace is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 12,040 at the 2010 census, up from 11,626 at the 2000 census. Grand Terrace is located between Highgrove and Colton, along the I-215 and Agua Mans ...

, Northwest = Loma Linda , image = Mountains of Riverside County, California Geography of Riverside, California Mountains of Southern California

Geography

History

Natural history

See also

References

Further reading

External links