Bell Mountain is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in the Victor Valley region of the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

, within

San Bernardino County San Bernardino County ( ), officially the County of San Bernardino and sometimes abbreviated as S.B. County, 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 th ...

, southern

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is north of Apple Valley, east of

Interstate 15 Interstate 15 (I-15) is a major Interstate Highway in the Western United States, running through Southern California and the Intermountain West. I-15 begins near the Mexican border in San Diego County and stretches north to Alberta, Ca ...

, and northeast of

Victorville Victorville is a city in Victor Valley in San Bernardino County, California. Its population as of the 2020 census was 134,810. Victorville is the principal city of a Victor Valley–based urban area defined by the United States Census Bureau: ...

. The town lies at 3,082 feet above sea level on Dale Evans Parkway. A post office was established in the community in 1953 but it was discontinued three years later.

History

The rural community of Bell Mountain was founded in 1904 when a group of black homesteaders from Los Angeles began settling on government land around Victorville, California. Most of the Bell Mountain homesteaders were southerners who had migrated west in stages during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, eventually arriving in California and at Bell Mountain. Their goal was to become landowners and to create a prosperous, “all-black” agricultural community in the desert outskirts of Los Angeles. These homesteaders included Nolie and Lela Murray, notable entrepreneurs from the Los Angeles black community who would go on to establish Murray's Dude Ranch at Bell Mountain in the 1930s.

References

Unincorporated communities in San Bernardino County, California Populated places in the Mojave Desert Victor Valley Unincorporated communities in California {{SanBernardinoCountyCA-geo-stub