Crowder Canyon, originally Coyote Canyon, is a

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

San Bernardino County, California San Bernardino County (), officially the County of San Bernardino, is a County (United States), county located in the Southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of the ...

. Its mouth was at an elevation of at its confluence with

Cajon Canyon Cajon Canyon, originally named El Cajon De San Gabriel De Amuscopiabit, ''El Cajon'' in Spanish meaning "the box" in English, is a long valley ending in a box canyon in the northeastern San Gabriel Mountains, within San Bernardino County, Californ ...

. Its source was at an elevation of 4200 feet at near

Cajon Summit Cajon Pass (; Spanish: ''Puerto del Cajón'' or ''Paso del Cajón'') is a mountain pass between the San Bernardino Mountains to the east and the San Gabriel Mountains to the west in Southern California. Created by the movements of the San Andr ...

. The canyon runs southward just west of the top of Cajon Pass then turns southwestward to meet Cajon Canyon.

History

As ''Coyote Canyon'', what is now Crowder Canyon, was the route that first the Old Spanish Trail and then the

Mormon Road Mormon Road, also known to the 49ers as the Southern Route, of the California Trail in the Western United States, was a seasonal wagon road pioneered by a Mormon party from Salt Lake City, Utah led by Jefferson Hunt, that followed the route of S ...

passed through the

Cajon Pass Cajon Pass (; Spanish: ''Puerto del Cajón'' or ''Paso del Cajón'') is a mountain pass between the San Bernardino Mountains to the east and the San Gabriel Mountains to the west in Southern California. Created by the movements of the San Andreas ...

Antonio Armijo Antonio Mariano Armijo (1804–1850) was a Spanish explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of ...

, who pioneered the Old Spanish Trail, did not cross over the

San Bernardino Mountains The San Bernardino Mountains are a high and rugged mountain range in Southern California in the United States. Situated north and northeast of San Bernardino and spanning two California counties, the range tops out at at San Gorgonio Mountain � ...

by the

Mojave Trail The Mojave Road, also known as Old Government Road (formerly the Mohave Trail), is a historic route and present day dirt road across what is now the Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert in the United States. This rough road stretched ...

route over Monument Peak but followed a route he called "Cañon de San Bernardino" from the upper Mojave River west through

and down Crowder Canyon and then

. It was known to the

vaqueros The ''vaquero'' (; pt, vaqueiro, , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became t ...

of the

San Bernardino de Sena Estancia The San Bernardino de Sena Estancia (also known as the San Bernardino Rancho or Asistencia) was a ranch outpost of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in what is now in Redlands, California, United States. It was built to graze cattle, and for Indian ...

who had come to the aid of Armijo's party with food. This route ran along the course of Crowder Canyon to its mouth at Cajon Canyon and down to the mouth of the canyon at Sycamore Grove.Edward Leo Lyman, Overland Journey from Utah to California: Wagon Travel from the City of Saints to the City of Angels, University of Nevada Press, 2008. The 1851 Mormon Waybill, a pamphlet for travelers on the Mormon Road, written by Joseph Cain, one of the earliest travelers on the route in 1849, described conditions on this route as "Road bad down the canon."LeRoy Reuben Hafen, Ann Woodbury Hafen, Journals of Forty-niners: Salt Lake to Los Angeles: with Diaries and Contemporary Records of Sheldon Young, James S. Brown, Jacob Y. Stover, Charles C. Rich, Addison Pratt, Howard Egan, Henry W. Bigler, and Others, U of Nebraska Press, 1954, pp.321-324 Mormon Waybill, Joseph Cain and A. C. Brower, Salt Lake City, 1851.
/ref> Originally the route of herds of horses and a trail for pack horse trains in single file, the first wagons had difficulty passing along the old horse trail, rocks had to be moved, trail widened or the wagons taken apart and carried over intractable obstructions. Soon an alternate and marginally less difficult but longer route on a narrow ridge was found some miles to the west in the upper Cajon Canyon. In 1855 the state of California funded a passable road a mile or so farther west called the

Sanford Cutoff Sanford may refer to: People *Sanford (given name), including a list of people with the name *Sanford (surname), including a list of people with the name Places United States * Sanford, Alabama, a town in Covington County * Sanford, Colorad ...

. In 1861, as a result of the

Holcomb Valley Holcomb Valley, located in the San Bernardino Mountains about five miles north of Big Bear Lake, was the site of the most gold mines in Southern California. It was named after William F. Holcomb, who found gold there in 1860. That year started th ...

gold rush, the difficult but shorter, Crowder Canyon route was made into a good road and a toll charged.

Today

California State Route 138 State Route 138 (SR 138) is an east–west state highway in the U.S. state of California that generally follows the northern foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and the western Mojave Desert. The scenic highway begins in the west at its ...

now passes along Crowder Canyon between

Cajon Junction Cajon Junction is an unincorporated community in Cajon Canyon and the northern Cajon Pass area, within San Bernardino County, California. It is located at the intersection of California State Route 138 (Pearblossom Highway) and Interstate 15 ...

Interstate 15 Interstate 15 (I-15) is a major Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway in the western United States, running through Southern California and the Intermountain West. I-15 begins near the Mexico–United States border, Mexican border i ...

and the summit of

References

{{coord, 34, 18, 20, N, 117, 27, 56, W, display=title Valleys of San Bernardino County, California Mormon Road