page_title: Beaumont, California
section_title: Early History
hierarchical_section_title: Beaumont, California / History / Early History
caption_attribution_description: English: Unknown published post card, Photo is not created by user, rather taken from www.epodunk.com, whose policy on post cards state "Post cards are vintage images from the early 1900s". Copyright laws for these images are inapplicable because of their date.
context_page_description: Beaumont is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, located at the summit of the San Gorgonio Pass, between the San Bernardino Mountains and Mount San Gorgonio to the north, and the San Jacinto Mountains and San Jacinto Peak to the south. Early native American inhabitants included the Serrano and Cahuilla people, who still live on reservation lands in the area.
  Beaumont is bordered on the east by the city of Banning, on the south by the city of San Jacinto, on the west by the city of Calimesa, and on the north by the unincorporated community of Cherry Valley.
context_section_description: During the early 1850s, several surveying parties passed through the vicinity of present-day Beaumont in search of a pass that would connect the east to the Pacific Ocean. The San Gorgonio Pass was first surveyed in 1853 during an expedition under Lieutenant R.S. Williamson, who was sent by the United States government. Its location enthralled many who now saw that connecting to the ocean was a feasible measure and led to plans for constructing a railway from the Missouri River to the Pacific. By the early 1860s, stagecoach lines were providing service through the pass area, and a stage stop was established, named Edgar Station, after a physician from one of the expedition parties who made his home in the area.
  In 1875 when the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks through the modern-day location of Beaumont, they established a rail station named Summit Station. This served as a rest stop for railway travelers from the Mojave Desert on their way to the Los Angeles vicinity. In 1884 a real estate development company established a town named San Gorgonio. A second real estate development company purchased the town in 1887 and renamed the town Beaumont, which was incorporated on November 18, 1912.
  As of 1927, the small city had a population of 857 with five churches, a public library, a bank, a high school, two local newspapers, several lumber yards, commercial packing houses, and a dehydrating plant. The city, one of Riverside County's largest apple growers, was dubbed "the land of the big red apple" by local residents in its early years. Apple orchards in the area expanded to a $200,000 industry by 1930. Beaumont saw a rise in visitors and residents as the nearby city of Palm Springs grew to become a highly popular resort spot during and after the 1930s; Beaumont followed suit and attempted to capitalize on the increasing tourism by establishing guest ranches. According to an early 1930s/1940s postcard, the Highland Springs Guest Ranch of Beaumont offered its patrons horseback riding, tennis, archery, horseshoes, swimming, shuffle-board, ping pong, baseball, ballroom dancing, massages, basketball, and lodging accommodations.
caption: A postcard of an early Beaumont luxury hotel sitting within local plant life typical of the area
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2004:07:20 19:36:14", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "300", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4845", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "267"}