Palomar Mountain Range
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Palomar Mountain ( ; es, Monte Palomar ) is a mountain ridge in the
Peninsular Ranges The Peninsular Ranges (also called the Lower California province) are a group of mountain ranges that stretch from Southern California to the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula; they are part of the North American Coast Ranges, which ...
in northern
San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the fi ...
. It is famous as the location of the
Palomar Observatory Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...
and Hale Telescope, and known for the
Palomar Mountain State Park Palomar Mountain ( ; es, Monte Palomar ) is a mountain ridge in the Peninsular Ranges in northern San Diego County. It is famous as the location of the Palomar Observatory and Hale Telescope, and known for the Palomar Mountain State Park. Histo ...
.


History

The
Luiseño The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of L ...
Indian name for Palomar Mountain was and High Point was called . The Spanish name ''Palomar'', meaning "pigeon roost" or “place of the pigeons”, comes from the Spanish colonial era in
Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...
when Palomar Mountain was known as the home of
band-tailed pigeon The band-tailed pigeon (''Patagioenas fasciata'') is a medium-sized bird of the Americas. Its closest relatives are the Chilean pigeon and the ring-tailed pigeon, which form a clade of ''Patagioenas'' with a terminal tail band and iridescent pl ...
s. The peak was once called Smith Mountain but reverted to its Spanish name, Palomar, in 1901. During the 1890s, the human population was sufficient to support three public schools, and it was a popular summer resort for
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 ...
, with three hotels in operation part of the time, and a tent city in Doane Valley each summer.


Palomar Observatory

Palomar Mountain is most famous as the home of the
Palomar Observatory Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...
and the
Hale Telescope The Hale Telescope is a , 3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, de ...
. The 200-inch telescope was the world's largest and most important telescope from 1949 until 1992. The observatory currently consists of three large telescopes. It uses a 23-ton glass block cast by José Antonio de Artigas Sanz.


Palomar Mountain State Park

Palomar Mountain is the location of Palomar Mountain State Park, a
California State Park The California Department of Parks and Recreation, more commonly known as California State Parks, manages the California state parks system. The system administers 279 separate park units on 1.4 million acres (570,000 hectares), with over 280 ...
. There are campgrounds for vacationers, and a campground for local school children until the San Diego Unified School District was forced to close it due to state budget cuts. The park averages 70,000 visitors annually. The campgrounds in the park were temporarily closed on October 2, 2011, due to state budget cuts. The park was among 70 California State Parks threatened by budget cuts in fiscal years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, but the park and the campgrounds remain open. Palomar Mountain, especially in the state park area, is densely wooded with abundant oak and conifer tree species (pine, cedar, fir). Ferns are abundant everywhere in the shady forest. The forest is supported by annual precipitation totals in excess of 30 inches. Beginning in the 1920s a fire
lookout tower A fire lookout tower, fire tower or lookout tower, provides housing and protection for a person known as a "fire lookout" whose duty it is to search for wildfires in the wilderness. It is a small building, usually on the summit of a mountain or ...
has been present on Boucher Hill on Palomar Mountain. The tower had been active until it was abandoned in 1983 and then was reactivated when the San Diego/Riverside County Chapter of the FFL
Forest Fire Lookout Association - San Diego/Riverside Chapter
began manning it in 2012. Boucher Hill sees more than 11,000 visitors a season. The tower opens around May 1 in conjunction with the fire season and closes in early December. During this period the tower is typically staffed 7 days a week from 9am to 5pm. Doane Valley, located within the State Park, is home to the Camp Palomar Outdoor School for 6th grade students in the San Diego Unified School District.


Oak Knoll Campground

At the base of Palomar Mountain on County Route S6 is Oak Knoll Campground, formerly known as Palomar Gardens. In the 1950s and 1960s, Palomar Gardens was made famous by its owner and resident, UFO
contactee Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases. As a cultural phenomenon, c ...
George Adamski George Adamski (17 April 1891 – 23 April 1965) was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of ...
. Adamski had a self-built, wooden observatory at Palomar Gardens and photographed objects in the night sky that he claimed were UFOs. Adamski co-authored the bestselling ''Flying Saucers Have Landed'' in 1953, about his alleged alien encounter experiences, and in particular his meetings with a friendly "Space Brother" from Venus named Orthon. The 1977 film ''
The Crater Lake Monster ''The Crater Lake Monster'' is a 1977 B-movie horror film directed by William R. Stromberg for Crown International Pictures, and starring Richard Cardella. The storyline revolves around a giant plesiosaur, akin to the Loch Ness Monster, which ...
'' had many scenes filmed on Palomar Mountain, including scenes shot at the summit restaurant, but not the scenes of the monster in a lake.


High Point

High Point, in the Palomar Mountain range, is one of the highest peaks in San Diego County. At an elevation of , it is surpassed by
Cuyamaca Peak Cuyamaca Peak is a mountain peak of the Cuyamaca Mountains range, in San Diego County, Southern California. Geography At , its summit is the second highest point in San Diego County. Cuyamaca Peak is located roughly from the Pacific Ocean, wi ...
(at ) and
Hot Springs Mountain Hot Springs Mountain is a peak located in the Peninsular Ranges in California. The mountain rises to an elevation of and is the highest point in San Diego County. Some snow falls on the mountain peak during winter. It is located in a remote regio ...
(the county's highest point, at ). They are dwarfed by the higher
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 ...
a relatively short 52 miles to the north, in
San Bernardino County San Bernardino County (), officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 2,181, ...
, the
San Jacinto Mountains The San Jacinto Mountains (''Avii Hanupach''Munro, P., et al. ''A Mojave Dictionary''. Los Angeles: UCLA. 1992. in Mojave) are a mountain range in Riverside County, located east of Los Angeles in southern California in the United States. The mou ...
30 miles north in
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 ...
and the high
Mount Whitney Mount Whitney (Paiute: Tumanguya; ''Too-man-i-goo-yah'') is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, with an elevation of . It is in East–Central California, on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tu ...
some farther north. High Point is located approximately two miles east of the observatory. However, it is not accessible by the public from that direction as the observatory itself and adjacent land are private property, and the road to High Point from the observatory is blocked by a permanently closed gate. It may be reached via Palomar Divide Truck Trail, a dirt road that starts off Highway 79 near
Warner Springs, California Warner Springs is set of springs and a small unincorporated community in northern San Diego County, California. Warner Springs is on the Pacific Crest Trail. Geography Warner Springs has a post office and the ZIP code is 92086. It is located n ...
. The trip is 13 miles one way with 3000 feet of elevation gain via Palomar Divide Truck Trail. High Point can also be hiked on the Oak Grove Trail, the oldest established trail on the Palomar Ranger District. The hike is 13.5 miles roundtrip. There is an operational
USFS The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency in ...
fire lookout tower on High Point, built in 1964. It is 70 feet tall, making it the tallest USFS fire tower in California. It was brought back into service in 2009 and is staffed by the San Diego/Riverside County Chapter of the FFL
Forest Fire Lookout Association - San Diego/Riverside
Other local peaks include: *Birch Hill () *Boucher Hill ().


Access

South Grade Road, the stretch of
San Diego County Route S6 There are 34 routes assigned to the "S" zone of the California Route Marker Program, which designates county routes in California. The "S" zone includes county highways in Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara counties. S1 ...
going from State Route 76 to the summit provides access with over 20
hairpin turn A hairpin turn (also hairpin bend or hairpin corner) is a bend in a road with a very acute inner angle, making it necessary for an oncoming vehicle to turn about 180° to continue on the road. It is named for its resemblance to a bent metal hai ...
s over the distance of less than .


Climate

According to the
Köppen Climate Classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...
system, Palomar Mountain has a
hot-summer Mediterranean climate A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...
, abbreviated "Csa" on climate maps. Annual precipitation on the mountain averages 30–35 inches (highly variable from year to year), mostly falling between October and April. Snow falls during cold winter storms. Summers are mostly dry, except for thunderstorms in July to early September. The humid climate supports a forest of oak, pine, fir and cedar on large swaths of the mountain.


Natural history

The upper elevations of the Palomar Mountain Range have notably different
habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
s than its lower elevation foothills. The lower regions are in the
California montane chaparral and woodlands The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part of ...
sub-ecoregion, adapted to the xeric/dry
Mediterranean climate A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...
with chaparral and woodlands flora. The higher regions are in the
California mixed evergreen forest : California mixed evergreen forest is a plant community found in the mountain ranges of California and southwestern Oregon. The Mixed evergreen forest plant community is native to the Northern and Southern California Coast Ranges and Sierra Nev ...
sub-ecoregion, with
California black oak ''Quercus kelloggii'', the California black oak, also known as Kellogg oak, is an oak in the red oak section (genus ''Quercus'', section ''Lobatae'', series ''Agrifoliae''), native to western North America. Although genetically separated from the ...
s, closed-cone pines, firs, and other California oaks and
conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...
s. Higher elevations receive considerably more moisture than the coastal and inland valley lower slopes, with of precipitation. They can also receive snow from winter storms.


See also

*
California montane chaparral and woodlands The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part of ...
*
California oak woodland California oak woodland is a plant community found throughout the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California in the United States and northwestern Baja California in Mexico. Oak woodland is widespread at lower elevations in coasta ...
s *
Closed-cone pine forest Closed-cone pine forest is a plant community of coastal California and several offshore islands. The plant community is often mono-dominant and single-aged, but dense with ladder fuels. Closed Cone forests grow in low nutrient and/or stressed soils, ...
s


References


Sources

* * * *


External links


California State Parks: official Palomar Mountain State Park website



Palomar Mountain History (book)



Forest Fire Lookout Association - San Diego/Riverside County Chapter
{{Authority control Mountains of San Diego County, California Cleveland National Forest North County (San Diego County) Peninsular Ranges Mountains of Southern California