SPRINGS, WELLS AND RIVERS

SPRINGS, WELLS AND RIVERS

The Mojave dessert in Lucerne Valley has quite a few springs as well as artesian wells.  As a kid growing up on Rabbit Springs Road I was lucky enough to live next door to one of the biggest ranches in the valley.  When I was small it was known as the Harmony Hills Ranch and later it was named the Well’s ranch. 

Meridian Road was its western boundary and Rabbit Springs Road its southern boundary.

 

The forman for all of my twenty years there was a man named Mr. Lowe. He and his wife had a sweet house about a mile up Meridian from Rabbit Springs Road. At the edge of their property was a well house and we never passed it that we did not stop for a drink from that well. I lived less than a mile away yet the difference between the water from our well and the water from this well was stunning, even to a child. It was the sweetest taste in the world. People referred to it as an artesian well and I don’t know if that’s true but I do know it was some of the best water I have ever tasted.

 

I have been back several times in the recent years and have seen what has been done to that land.  Someone had a vision that they were going to build a community there on that oasis.  They tore down and ruined two ranches between Meridian Road and Barstow Road and planted some palm trees, which are now dying.  It is the saddest site in the world to me.  That artesian well up Meridian is nothing but junk now.  Mr. and Mrs. Lowes house (where I first watch Roller Derby and Wrestling on TV) is gone as well. 

I believe there is also a spring up at what was the Sky High Ranch.  Does anyone know what has become of that place?  There is a spring up on the mountain on the northwestern shore of LV dry lake but to my knowledge it is not a year-round spring and does not produce much fresh water. 

Closer to the Mojave River to the north there are several more springs but again, not year-round and with only sparse amounts of fresh water. 

The only reliable year round natural water sources that I know of in the dessert valley are at Old Woman Springs, Rabbit Springs, Deep Creek and the Mojave River.

RABBIT SPRINGS

There is no question in my mind that natives had a fairly permanent camp at Rabbit Springs.  As a kid in the 60’s I spent many hours roaming the hill adjacent to the spring.  I was able to find arrowheads, chips, pottery shards and beads without much effort.  Any digging at all on top of the knoll turned up even more.  It became clear to me that this was more than a transient camp and likely had been used over millennia if not longer.  A modern house has been built there now.  I never did look farther than that knoll and the area right around the spring itself. 

I can also attest to the fact the there were always hundreds of rabbits around the springs, even in the 1960s.  It seems obvious that it had been called Rabbit Springs long before Anglo settlers arrived.  A place with water and plentiful rabbits would be an obvious camp site for the natives, likely in the spring and fall. 

1884 Peter Davidson operated a Way Station at Rabbit Springs offering dusty travelers fresh water, news and rest.  He became known to those in the valley as "Uncle Pete."  He died in 1906 and his grave is at Kendall Road and Rabbit Springs Road.

In 1896 Al Swarthout acquired the land around Rabbit Springs and named it the Box S, intending to raise cattle. While there was plenty of water there was not enough natural grass to grow a ranch. Swarthout and a friend found a place about 15 miles to the east, which had even more water and lots of forage, Old Woman Springs.

OLD WOMAN SPRINGS

Like Rabbit Springs, Old Woman Springs likely has a connection to its name. Was it a place where old women went for some reason?  Conventional thinking holds that it is where the old women stayed while the younger ones went to gather pinion nuts in the mountains.  I doubt that it was quite that simple but, given the year round above ground water, trees, forage and easy access to both the dessert floor and the mountains, Old Woman Springs had to have been a permanent native site.  Even today it is the best year round spring on the LV end of the San Gabriel Mountains; it seems likely it has been that way for thousands of years.  All of the other springs in the valley that I am aware of, including Rabbit Springs, are intermittent and mostly underground. 

I am guessing there is a fairly easy trail up to Holcomb Valley and Big Bear from Old Woman Springs.  It seems likely that Rabbit Springs, Old Woman Springs, Holcomb Valley and Big Bear would have all been native camp sites, not only hundreds of years ago but thousands of years ago. 

THE MOJAVE RIVER

The Mojave River comes out of the mountains south of Apple Valley then heads to Victorville and then north to Oro Grande then it leans to the east where it passes through Barstow.  After Barstow it meanders on towards …

At many places in the river bed there is nothing but sand and even quicksand.  At other places the water rises and there is a stream.  And then at others it’s an above ground river year-round. 

The watershed of the Mojave River = approx. 3670 sq miles (9500 sq km)

Chronology of the Ancestral Mojave River through the late cenozoic.

11-10 Ma. (million years ago)
The region sloped toward the Pacific Ocean

8-7.6 Ma.
Birth of ancestral Transverse Ranges (San Gabriel fault)

3.5 Ma.
San Gabriel Mountains rise blocking the slope to the ocean and forming marshlands. Ancestral Deep Creek coming out of the San Bernardino Range begins to appear.

2.5-2 Ma.
Continued rise of the San Bernardino Range along the San Andreas fault reverse the regional drainage direction.

1.5-1 Ma.
The development of faults further to the north and east.

.5 Ma.
Appearance of perennial lakes Harper and Manix

70-80 ka. (thousand years ago)
Ancestral Mojave River develops as an incised channel with a course.