Cajon Pass: A tough ride
Nicholas R. Cataldo, Local Historian
SB Sun 3-28-06
With so many people moving into San Bernardino County, driving through the Cajon Pass can be a real hassle. And when that awful traffic is compounded by high winds or dense fog, the driving situation is almost unbearable. But these problems are a piece of cake compared to what Southern Californians had to wrestle with while attempting to make their way through the pass a century and half ago.
When the pioneer Wixom family came through in 1851, they had one heck of a time. They were among the first group of Mormon colonists to establish the city of San Bernardino.
Before the Wixoms arrived, the Salt Lake Road which is what most caravans followed entered the Cajon Pass by way of Coyote Canyon, a narrow boulder-strewn creek bed southeast of where Highway 138 intersects Interstate 15. Unfortunately, the old byway was far more advantageous for pack mules. In fact, the few wagoners who attempted to squeak through in previous years had been forced to dismantle their vehicles and drag the contents over the rocks.
When freighter William Sanford's alternative route by way of West Cajon (near the Mojave Desert region of Baldy Mesa) was broken out just in time for the Mormons' arrival from Salt Lake, the Wixoms were eager to take the "new and improved" cutoff.
Some improvement!
Mary (Wixom) Crandall (1834-1927) recalled in her later years to historian and author John Brown Jr., that while crossing the range of mountains leading into the Cajon Pass in December of 1851, the wagons had to descend a 60-foot steep and narrow ridge. To get down the slope, one yoke of oxen was used to keep the wagons on the ridge with the other animals yoked behind to hold the wagon back and keep it from somersaulting on the foreword oxen, and possibly rolling down the side of the cliff hundreds of feet below.
Before the clan finally made it into the San Bernardino Valley, the Wixoms were in for more excitement.
While working their way down the pass, the weather turned chilly. Mary a teenager at the time was driving her two-oxen team as her mother hovered with the shivering younger children around a small wagon stove. All of a sudden, a violent Santa Ana gust came and lifted the wagon box off the running gear. Blowing off the side of the road went mother, the kids, the stove, etc. The tipped stove ignited the wagon cover. Quick-witted Mary saved the day and the lives of her family members by dousing the flames with contents of a churn full of buttermilk.
John Brown Sr., a former mountain man turned businessman, saw the increasing volume of wagon traffic through the pass and with two partners took out a 20-year franchise from the state in 1861 to build and maintain a toll road. Brown chose the old Salt Lake route through Coyote Canyon, but instead of dealing with the rocky stream bed, he built his road up on the side of the canyon above it.
Unfortunately, large segments of the road washed out several times and the frustrated travelers weren't overly thrilled by his toll-road rates:
Man and horse 25 cents
Wagon and one span of horses $1.00
Each additional span 25 cents
Loose stock cattle or horses per head 5 cents
Pack animals 25 cents
Sheep 3 cents
Horse cart or buggy 50 cents
Traveling through the Cajon Pass didn't appear to get a whole lot better with the advent of the automobile.
A testimony to the rigors our early motorists had to endure was an interview by Claire Beckmann for the December 1972 issue of Desert Magazine.
"From our ranch in Apple Valley to the top of the Cajon Pass was the pleasantest part of our journey to San Bernardino in the early '20s. . . . The road over Cajon was an experience. It was carved out of the side of the mountain just wide enough so that two cars could pass every quarter mile or so. The blind curves were legion and hardly a month went by but someone ran off the road and over one of the many steep banks. This was before the advent of the white line; often the fog was so bad that cars could travel only five mile(s) per hour. If you were unfortunate enough to get behind a truck, there you remained there was no possibility of passing, especially up-grade. So a trip to San Bernardino from our apple orchard in Apple Valley, a distance of 45 miles, took about four hours with luck (no flats or broken axles)."
Wow! Now doesn't that make present-day freeway problems seem like a stroll through the park?
Nicholas R. Cataldo is a local historian. Readers can write to him at The Sun, 2239 Gannett Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407, or contact him by e-mail at
yankeenut@excite.com.
