San Jacinto Peak (; often designated Mount San Jacinto) is a peak in 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 ...

, in

Riverside County, California Riverside County is a County (United States), county located in the southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most ...

. Lying within

Mount San Jacinto State Park Mount San Jacinto State Park is in the San Jacinto Mountains, of the Peninsular Ranges system, in Riverside County, California, United States. A majority of the park is within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. The par ...

it is the highest both in the range and the county, and serves as the southern border of the

San Gorgonio Pass The San Gorgonio Pass, or Banning Pass, is a elevation gap on the rim of the Great Basin between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass was formed by the San Andreas Fault, a major tra ...

. Naturalist

John Muir John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, a ...

wrote of San Jacinto Peak, "The view from San Jacinto is the most sublime spectacle to be found anywhere on this earth!" San Jacinto Peak is one of the most

topographically prominent In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

peaks in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, and is ranked the sixth most prominent peak in the 48 contiguous states. According to John W. Robinson and Bruce D. Risher, authors of ''The San Jacintos,'' "No Southern California hiker worth his salt would miss climbing 'San Jack' at least once." Known for its spectacular north escarpment, the peak rises over above San Gorgonio Pass. It plays host to the famous Cactus to Clouds Trail.

Geography

To the east of San Jacinto, the peak towers over the city of

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

(elevation 479 ft; 146 m); to the west, it borders the mountain community of Idyllwild (elevation 5,413 ft; 1,650 m). The peak is also frequently called Mount San Jacinto. The steep

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''escar ...

of its north face, above Snow Creek, climbs over in . This is one of the largest gains in elevation over such a small horizontal distance in the

contiguous United States The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...

. From the peak, San Gorgonio Mountain can be seen across the

. Also easily visible below is the

Coachella Valley , map_image = Wpdms shdrlfi020l coachella valley.jpg , map_caption = Coachella Valley , location = California, United States , coordinates = , width = , boundaries = Salton Sea (southeast), Santa Rosa Mountains (southwest), San Jacint ...

and the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...

. In addition, much of the Inland Empire, including

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

to the west, can be viewed on a clear day. Named after

Hyacinth of Caesarea Hyacinth (, ''Hyakinthos''; died 108) was a young Christian living at the start of the second century, who is honored as a martyr and a saint by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Hyacinth is sometimes called by his ...

, Mount San Jacinto is one of the "Four Saints," a name occasionally used to describe the high points of the four mountains over 10,000 feet named for Catholic saints in Southern California: San Jacinto Peak,

Mount San Gorgonio San Gorgonio is Spanish for "Saint Gorgonius"; San Gorgonio might also refer to: Landforms and parks *San Gorgonio Mountain, California, United States *San Gorgonio Pass, California, United States *San Gorgonio River, California, United States * S ...

(high point of 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 � ...

), San Bernardino Peak, and

Mount San Antonio Mount San Antonio, commonly referred to as Mount Baldy or Old Baldy, is a summit in the San Gabriel Mountains on the border of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties of California. Lying within the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and ...

(high point of the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains ( es, Sierra de San Gabriel) are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Tr ...

History

The peak is known to the

Cahuilla The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Dakush'', the meteor and legendary founder of the Cahuilla. In 1878, a

Wheeler Survey The Wheeler Survey, carried out in 1872-1879, was one of the "Four Great Surveys" conducted by the US government after the Civil War primarily to document the geology and natural resources of the American West. Supervised by First Lieutenant (lat ...

topographical party led by rancher Charles Thomas of Garner Valley climbed the peak. The Wheeler Survey gave the mountain the name "San Jacinto Peak" (rather than "Mt. San Jacinto" or "San Jacinto Mountain.") The earliest recorded ascent of the peak was made in September, 1874 by "F. of Riverside," according to a description of his ascent in the ''

San Diego Union ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868. Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...

''. The first successful ascent of the difficult northeast escarpment was made in 1931 by Floyd Vernoy and Stewart White of

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 ...

. The peak is flanked by Jean Peak and Marion Mountain . These peaks were named in 1897 by

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, a ...

topographer Edmund Taylor Perkins Jr. Perkins named Jean Peak for his sweetheart and future bride, Jean Waters of Plumas County, whom he married in 1903. He named Marion Mountain after Marion Kelly, his girlfriend, a teacher for the

Indian Bureau The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and Al ...

at the Morongo Valley Reservation. According to a local legend, Perkins spent the summer of 1897 deciding which woman to marry while he conducted his

topographical Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

survey of San Jacinto Peak and its environs. Nearby Cornell Peak is named for

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, the alma mater of geologist

Robert T. Hill Robert Thomas Hill (August 11, 1858 – July 20, 1941) was a significant figure in the development of American geology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a pioneer Texas geologist, Hill discovered and named the Comanche series of t ...

. Perkins and Hill were camping in Round Valley when Hill remarked that the peak looked like the campanile tower at Cornell. Perkins later named the peak Cornell Peak. In 1931 and 1932, the San Jacinto Mountain Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Labor Day footrace from Idyllwild to San Jacinto Peak and back, a distance of and a rise of . The 1931 race was won by Tom Humphreys, a Hopi, in 3:36:30. Humphreys won the race again in 1932 with a time of 3:12. Near the summit of San Jacinto peak is a stone hut that was built in 1935 by the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

under the direction of Serbo-Croatian immigrant Alfred Zarubicka, a stonemason known in Idyllwild as "Zubi."

Hiking

San Jacinto Peak is easily accessible, as many trails penetrate the

Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument is a National Monument in southern California. It includes portions of the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountain ranges, the northernmost ones of the Peninsular Ranges system. The nationa ...

. The most popular route starts with a ride on the

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway in Palm Springs, California, is the largest rotating aerial tramway in the world. It was opened in September 1963 as a way of getting from the floor of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto Peak and was ...

from Valley Station at near Palm Springs up to Mountain Station at . From there, one can easily climb the mountain face via trails. Another route is to hike the Marion Mountain Trail from near the mountain town of Idyllwild. There is a naturally reproducing but introduced population of Sequoiadendrons planted in 1974 located here hundreds of miles from native populations. The Cactus to Clouds Trail involves an arduous climb of approximately from the desert floor in Palm Springs to the summit at . This trail has no water sources until , so early starts are advised to avoid the temperatures which often soar above .

References

External links

* * * * * * * {{Authority control Mountains of Riverside County, California Religious places of the indigenous peoples of North America San Jacinto Mountains Mountains of Southern California San Gorgonio Pass

Geography

History

Hiking

See also

References

External links