Bonnie Bell 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 ...

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

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 ...

, United States. It lies at an elevation of 1683 feet (513 m). Bonnie Bell is located north of

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost transcontinental highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. It is the fourth-longest Interstate in the country at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. It was part of the origina ...

on Whitewater Canyon Road beside the Whitewater River. The community sits where the most eastern end of the

San Gorgonio Pass The San Gorgonio Pass, or Banning Pass, is a elevation Gap (landform), 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 Faul ...

meets the most northwestern end of the

Coachella Valley The Coachella Valley ( ) is an arid rift valley in the Colorado Desert of Southern California in Riverside County. The valley has been referred to as Greater Palm Springs and occasionally the Palm Springs Area due to the historic promine ...

, northwest of

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla language, 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 Rivers ...

Wind turbine controversy

The transition point from the San Gorgonio Pass to the Coachella Valley is one of the windiest locations in the United States. This makes the area ideal for wind energy projects. Beginning in the 1980s the

San Gorgonio Pass wind farm The San Gorgonio Pass wind farm is a wind farm that stretches from the eastern slope of the San Gorgonio Pass, near Cabazon, to North Palm Springs, on the western end of the Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, California. Flanked by Mount ...

started being developed. Many wind turbines were proposed and constructed around the community of Bonnie Bell. Though a tiny community, the people of Bonnie Bell strongly resisted any wind development that encroached on the town, or the ridges around the town. In 1992 the residents successfully lobbied the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

, and Mesa Wind Developers, to move 24 wind turbines from the eastern edge of the company's right-of-way, further back into 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 ...

. In 1999, and again in 2019, new proposals to install wind turbines on the ridges of Whitewater Canyon, above Bonnie Bell, were submitted for consideration. The residents claimed the settlement in 1992 prevented any additional development on the ridge, but the Bureau of Land Management has said future development had not been agreed to in the 1992 settlement.

References

Unincorporated communities in Riverside County, California Coachella Valley San Gorgonio Pass {{RiversideCountyCA-geo-stub