Kern County, California
Kern County is a county in the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 839,631, its county seat is Bakersfield. Kern County comprises California Metropolitan statistical area; the county spans the southern end of the Central Valley. Covering 8,161.42 square miles, it ranges west to the southern slope of the Coast Ranges, east beyond the southern slope of the eastern Sierra Nevada into the Mojave Desert, at the city of Ridgecrest. Its northernmost city is Delano and its southern reach expands just beyond Lebec to Grapevine and the northern tip of the parallel Antelope Valley; the county's economy is linked to agriculture and to petroleum extraction. There is a strong aviation and military presence, such as Edwards Air Force Base, the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, the Mojave Air and Space Port, it is one of the fastest-growing areas in the United States in terms of population growth, but suffers from significant water supply issues and poor air quality. The area was claimed by the Spanish in 1769.
In 1772 Commander Don Pedro Fages became the first European to enter it, from the south by way of the Grapevine Canyon. Kern County was the site of the Battle of San Emigdio, in March 1824, between the Chumash Indians of Mission Santa Barbara who rebelled against the Mexican government's taking over mission property and ejecting the natives; this battle with Mexican forces from Monterey under the command of Carlos Carrillo took place at the canyon where San Emigdio Creek flows down San Emigdio Mountain and the Blue Ridge south of Bakersfield near today's Highway 166. It was a low-casualty encounter, with only four Indians killed, no Mexicans. In the beginning, the area that became Kern County was dominated by mining in the mountains and in the desert. In 1855 an attempt to form a county in the area was made when the California legislature took the southeastern territory of Tulare County on the west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains for Buena Vista County, but it was never organized prior to 1859, when the enabling legislation expired.
The south of Tulare County was organized as Kern County in 1866, with additions from Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. Its first county seat was in the mining town of Havilah, in the mountains between Bakersfield and Tehachapi; the flatlands were considered inhospitable and impassable at the time due to swamps, tule reeds and diseases such as malaria. This changed when settlers started draining lands for farming and constructing canals, most dug by hand by hired Chinese laborers. Within 10 years the valley surpassed the mining areas as the economic center of the county, the county seat was moved as a result from Havilah to Bakersfield in 1874; the discovery well of the Kern River Oil Field was dug by hand in 1899. Soon the towns of Oil City, Oil Center and Oildale came into existence; the county derives its name from the Kern River, named for Edward Kern, cartographer for General John C. Frémont's 1845 expedition; the Kern River was named Rio Bravo de San Felipe by Father Francisco Garcés when he explored the area in 1776.
Severe earthquakes have struck Kern County within historical times, including the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake. On July 21, 1952, an earthquake occurred with the epicenter about 23 miles south of Bakersfield, it killed 12 people. In addition to the deaths, it was responsible for hundreds of injuries and more than $60 million in property damage; the main shock was felt over much of California and as far away as Phoenix and Reno, Nevada. The earthquake occurred on the White Wolf Fault and was the strongest to occur in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Tehachapi suffered the greatest damage and loss of life from the earthquake, though its effects were felt throughout central and southern California; the event had a significant aftershock sequence that persisted into July and August with the strongest coming on August 22, an M5.8 event with a maximum perceived intensity of VIII and resulted in two additional deaths and an additional $10 million in property damage. Repercussions of the sequence of earthquakes were still being felt in the damaged downtown area of Bakersfield well into the 1990s as city leaders attempted to improve safety of the surviving non-reinforced masonry buildings.
Following the event, a field survey was conducted along the fault zone with the goal of estimating the peak ground acceleration of the shock based on visually evaluating precarious rock formations and other indicators. Ground disturbances that were created by the earthquakes were surveyed, both in the valley and in the foothills, with both vertical and horizontal displacements present in the epicenter area; the strong motion records that were acquired from the event were significant, a reconnaissance report was recognized for its coverage of the event, how it set a standard for those types of engineering or scientific papers. Between 1983 and 1986, several ritual sex ring child abuse cases occurred in Kern County, resulting in numerous long prison sentences, all of which were overturned—some of them decades because the prosecutors had coerced false testimonies from the purported child victims; the details of these false accusations are covered extensively in the 2008 documentary Witch Hunt, narrated by Sean Penn.
Kern county is considered to be a hotbed of country music the Bakersfield sound. The Buck Owens Crystal Palace is located in Bakersfield; the 2015 Disn
Frank H. Buck
Frank Henry Buck was an American heir and politician. He served as U. S. Representative from California from 1933 to 1942. Frank Buck was born on a ranch near Vacaville, California on September 23, 1887, his grandfather, Leonard W. Buck, was the founder of the Buck Company, a fruit-growing company, elected to the California State Senate in 1895, he attended the public schools. He was a member of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1908 and from the law department of Harvard University in 1911, he commenced practice in San Francisco, California. He was involved in business ventures including fruit growing, oil refining, lumber thanks to his inheritance. In 1900, together with Burton E. Green, Charles A. Canfield, Max Whittier, William F. Herrin, Henry E. Huntington, William G. Kerckhoff, W. S. Porter and Frank H. Balch, known as the Amalgated Oil Company, he purchased Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas from Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker and renamed it Morocco Junction.
After drilling for oil and only finding water, they reorganized their business into the Rodeo Land and Water Company to develop a new residential town known as Beverly Hills, California. He became the leader of the newly founded California Grower's and Shipper's Protective League, a lobbying organization to protect the rights of fruit and vegetable growers. In 1933, he sold his grandfather's company, to the Pacific Fruit Exchange, he served as delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1928, 1936, 1940. In 1932, he was elected as a Democrat to the U. S. House of Representatives, he served in Congress from March 4, 1933 until his death in Washington, D. C. on September 17, 1942. He is credited with naming the Social Security program, he married Zayda Zabriskie in 1911 and they had four children, Frank Henry Buck III, Margaret Ann Buck, Christian Brevoort Zabriskie Buck and Edward Zabriskie Elvis Buck. After they divorced, he married Eva Mathilde Benson in 1926, they had two children, William Benson Buck and Carol Franz Buck.
He died on September 1942, while still in office. He was interred in Vacaville, California, his wife, Eva Benson Buck, founded the Frank H. Buck Scholarship, awarded each year to eight to 16 high school seniors, who have to live in his former congressional district, she was an active philanthropist until her death in 1990. List of United States Congress members who died in office This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website http://bioguide.congress.gov
Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California Region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are royal blue and white and the teams are called the Romans. Los Angeles High School is a public secondary high school, enrolling an estimated 2,000 students in grades 9-12. After operating on a year-round basis consisting of three tracks for ten years, it was restored to a traditional calendar in 2010. Los Angeles High School receives accreditation approval from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Concurrent enrollment programs, provided in large by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Community College District, are offered with West Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Trade Technical College, Los Angeles City College, or Santa Monica College. Los Angeles High School is a large, inner-city school located in the Mid-Wilshire District of Los Angeles; the attendance boundary consists of a contrasting spectrum of economic diversity ranging from affluent Hancock Park and Lafayette Square to the low-income, densely populated immigrant community of Koreatown.
Within the school is a College Incentive Magnet Program. Forty-four percent of the student population is identified as Limited English Proficient. 66% of the students are identified as eligible to receive supplemental instructional services and materials through the Federal Title I Program. The magnet high school has a university preparatory secondary high school program and a "school within a school." First established as a part of student integration services in the 1970s, the Los Angeles High School Math/Science/Technology magnet prepares students with an intensive, rigorous course load in order to better prepare them for university entrance. There are 317 students enrolled in the magnet program, grades 9-12; the senior class has 50% of seniors entering into four-year universities and schools. The magnet senior class has 90% of its senior class entering into four-year colleges and universities. Early buildings commissioned to house the Los Angeles High School were among the architectural jewels of the city, were strategically placed at the summit of a hill, the easier to be pointed to with pride.
One of the school's long standing mottos is "Always a hill, always a tower, always a timepiece." Construction on Los Angeles' first public high school, began on July 19, 1872, at the former site of Central School on what was known as Poundcake Hill, at the southeast corner of Fort Street, which the front of the school faced, Temple Street, with the back of the school to New High Street. The approximate coordinates are 34°03′20.44″N 118°14′36.48″W. As it was on the hill, a few hundred feet from the streets below, steep wooden stairways led up to the schoolyard; the two-story wooden structure was so big and grand, the finest school south of San Francisco at that time, with classic lines and a tower with a clock in it, that people traveled from miles around to see it. The teachers liked the wide corridors, walnut banisters, generous windows and the transoms over the doors; the schoolhouse was completed at a cost of $20,000, in 1873. Nearby, in succession, was the Court House, the City Hall, the Jones-Lindley Market and the Post Office.
The first principal was Rev. Dr. William T. Lucky and the first graduating class, in 1875, consisted of seven students. In 1879, a natural science club, the Star And Crescent Society, was founded at LAHS and consisted of the entire student body, it soon left its specific focus on science and became a de facto student government and organizational body. In 1887, the decision was made to move the high school building to Sand Street, just to the west of North Hill Street and below the south side of Fort Moore Hill, in order for the Los Angeles County Courthouse to be built on Poundcake Hill; the contractor, Mr. Hickam, said he could do the job with scaffolding, rollers and workmen, but his bid turned out to be too low. He lost a considerable amount of money because of his elaborate preparations, including the high wooden trestle which carried the building over the intersection of Temple and Fort Street. Hickam managed to get the schoolhouse halfway up Temple Street when he ran out of money and left it right in the middle of the street.
It was there for a good while. They jacked it up on scaffolding high enough for the Temple Street street cars to run under it, they got it moved up to its new location on Sand Street, where LAHS students and faculty remained until the second high school was built a few years later. The original schoolhouse remained at the Sand Street site for many years. After the high school moved out, it became a school for the lower grades, it went unharmed by the Long Beach earthquake in 1933, which did a lot of damage to the newer buildings in downtown. By April 1936, nearly 300 children attended school there. In 1890, construction began on a new red brick schoolhouse facing North Hill Street on Fort Moore Hill, between Sand Street and Bellevue Avenue, at coordinates 34°03′30.39″N 118°14′32.84″W, a short distance from the older wooden one facing Sand Street below. That same year, the Los Angeles City High School District was formed, it served students of LAHS while the Los Angeles City School District and various other elementary school districts served elementary and junior high school students.
This second location atop a hill was completed in 1891 and LAHS moved in. It was an enormous building for its time; the new high school was built on part
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region on the West Coast of the United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho; the parallel 42 ° north delineates the southern boundary with Nevada. Oregon is one of only four states of the continental United States to have a coastline on the Pacific Ocean. Oregon was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before Western traders and settlers arrived. An autonomous government was formed in the Oregon Country in 1843 before the Oregon Territory was created in 1848. Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859. Today, at 98,000 square miles, Oregon is the ninth largest and, with a population of 4 million, 27th most populous U. S. state. The capital, Salem, is the second most populous city in Oregon, with 169,798 residents. Portland, with 647,805, ranks as the 26th among U. S. cities. The Portland metropolitan area, which includes the city of Vancouver, Washington, to the north, ranks the 25th largest metro area in the nation, with a population of 2,453,168.
Oregon is one of the most geographically diverse states in the U. S. marked by volcanoes, abundant bodies of water, dense evergreen and mixed forests, as well as high deserts and semi-arid shrublands. At 11,249 feet, Mount Hood, a stratovolcano, is the state's highest point. Oregon's only national park, Crater Lake National Park, comprises the caldera surrounding Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States; the state is home to the single largest organism in the world, Armillaria ostoyae, a fungus that runs beneath 2,200 acres of the Malheur National Forest. Because of its diverse landscapes and waterways, Oregon's economy is powered by various forms of agriculture and hydroelectric power. Oregon is the top timber producer of the contiguous United States, the timber industry dominated the state's economy in the 20th century. Technology is another one of Oregon's major economic forces, beginning in the 1970s with the establishment of the Silicon Forest and the expansion of Tektronix and Intel.
Sportswear company Nike, Inc. headquartered in Beaverton, is the state's largest public corporation with an annual revenue of $30.6 billion. The earliest evidence of the name Oregon has Spanish origins; the term "orejón" comes from the historical chronicle Relación de la Alta y Baja California written by the new Spaniard Rodrigo Montezuma and made reference to the Columbia River when the Spanish explorers penetrated into the actual North American territory that became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This chronicle is the first topographical and linguistic source with respect to the place name Oregon. There are two other sources with Spanish origins, such as the name Oregano, which grows in the southern part of the region, it is most probable that the American territory was named by the Spaniards, as there are some populations in Spain such as "Arroyo del Oregón" considering that the individualization in Spanish language "El Orejón" with the mutation of the letter "g" instead of "j". Another early use of the name, spelled Ouragon, was in a 1765 petition by Major Robert Rogers to the Kingdom of Great Britain.
The term referred to the then-mythical River of the West. By 1778, the spelling had shifted to Oregon. In his 1765 petition, Rogers wrote: The rout...is from the Great Lakes towards the Head of the Mississippi, from thence to the River called by the Indians Ouragon... One theory is that the name comes from the French word ouragan, applied to the River of the West based on Native American tales of powerful Chinook winds on the lower Columbia River, or from firsthand French experience with the Chinook winds of the Great Plains. At the time, the River of the West was thought to rise in western Minnesota and flow west through the Great Plains. Joaquin Miller explained in Sunset magazine, in 1904, how Oregon's name was derived: The name, Oregon, is rounded down phonetically, from Ouve água—Oragua, Or-a-gon, Oregon—given by the same Portuguese navigator that named the Farallones after his first officer, it in a large way, means cascades:'Hear the waters.' You should steam up the Columbia and hear and feel the waters falling out of the clouds of Mount Hood to understand the full meaning of the name Ouve a água, Oregon.
Another account, endorsed as the "most plausible explanation" in the book Oregon Geographic Names, was advanced by George R. Stewart in a 1944 article in American Speech. According to Stewart, the name came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 18th century, on which the Ouisiconsink River was spelled "Ouaricon-sint", broken on two lines with the -sint below, so there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named "Ouaricon". According to the Oregon Tourism Commission, present-day Oregonians pronounce the state's name as "or-uh-gun, never or-ee-gone". After being drafted by the Detroit Lions in 2002, former Oregon Ducks quarterback Joey Harrington distributed "Orygun" stickers to members of the media as a reminder of how to pronounce the name of his home state; the stickers are sold by the University of Oregon Bookstore. Oregon is 295 miles north to south at longest distance, 395 miles east to west. With an area of 98,381 square miles, Oregon is larger than the United Kingdom.
It is the ninth largest state in the United States. Oregon's highest point is the summit of Mount Hood, at 11,249 feet, its lowest point is the sea level of the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon Coas
Jonathan Club
Jonathan Club is a private social club with two California locations—one in Downtown Los Angeles and the other abutting the beach in Santa Monica. The club is ranked as one of the top clubs in the world by Platinum Clubs of America; the club has two founding dates set in stone at the entrance to its Downtown Los Angeles building — 1894 and 1895. The club bases its anniversaries on the June 1895 date. Membership in the club is by invitation. Since its founding, the Jonathan Club has been accused of anti-Semitism and discrimination. In 1965, the Jonathan Club was charged with "anti-Negro" and "anti-Jew" bias and a complaint was raised that the membership dues of Mayor Sam Yorty were being paid by city taxpayers to support such discrimination. Yorty told a news conference. In July 1969, "at least one Jew" in the Jonathan Club, though it hadn't "taken in any Jewish members for at least two decades," Neil C. Sandberg regional director of the American Jewish Committee, told Jack Smith of the Los Angeles Times.
As public pressure mounted, Warner Heineman, vice chairman of Union Bank, Jewish, was admitted to membership in the Jonathan Club in October 1977. Jonathan Club president Robert Brimberry said in February 1978 that "In recent years certain restrictions have been changing.... We are accepting and considering all applications on their merit, including those of minorities and women."In 1975, the Jonathan club did not admit women as members. Women guests were "limited to certain floors, dining rooms and entrances," though recent policy changes allowed women to, "use the main elevator and lobby" at the Jonathan Club. In 1977 the Jonathan Club "voted overwhelmingly" to admit women to membership, though for a period of time, the club was accused of changing only the letter of the policy but not anything in practice. Prominent members include: John D. Bicknell, founder of law firm that became Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Herman Wolf Hellman, founder of Farmers & Merchants Bank. P. Giannini, founder of Bank of Italy Edgar Rice Burroughs and science fiction author Robert A. Millikan, experimental physicist.
C. Bloch, commander of 14th Naval District during Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor George Pepperdine, founded Western Auto Supply. S. Naval officer who perished aboard USS Arizona in 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. S. Supreme Court Buster Keaton, silent screen star Hal Roach, comedy writer and producer. Since 1927, the club has had a beach location in Santa Monica, in a building designed by architect Gene Verge, Sr.. Official website
Lost Hills Oil Field
The Lost Hills Oil Field is a large oil field in the Lost Hills Range, north of the town of Lost Hills in western Kern County, California, in the United States. While only the 18th-largest oil field in California in size, in total remaining reserves it ranks sixth, with the equivalent of over 110 million barrels producible reserves still in the ground, according to the California Division of Oil and Geothermal Resources. Production at Lost Hills has been increasing steadily: as of the end of 2006, it was California's second fastest-growing oil field, exceeded only by the nearby Cymric Field; the Lost Hills field contains considerable reserves of natural gas. In 1998, one of the field's gas wells was the site of a spectacular blowout, producing a pillar of fire which burned for 14 days and was visible more than 40 miles away; the Lost Hills Field underlies a long, low range of southeast-to-northwest trending hills of the same name adjacent to the San Joaquin Valley. The hills rise scarcely more than 200 feet above the San Joaquin Valley to the east, only 100 feet or less above the Antelope Plain to the west.
The hills and associated oil field are between Interstate 5 to the east and State Route 33 to the west, both of which parallel the field. The California Aqueduct runs adjacent to the field boundary on the northeast, the town of Lost Hills is on the other side of the aqueduct along California State Route 46, which passes through the field from east to west; the climate in the Lost Hills area is arid to semi-arid, with an average rainfall of 5 to 6 inches a year all in the winter months. Vegetation in the vicinity of the field is grassland and sparse scrub, with some adjacent orchards, although in the oil field itself most vegetation has been removed from the areas of active operations; the Lost Hills Field is one of a series of oil fields along anticlines between the Coalinga Oil Field on the north and the Midway-Sunset Field on the south, along the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley. These anticlines run parallel to the San Andreas Fault to the west, formed as a result of compression from tectonic movement.
The Lost Hills Field occupies a portion of a SE-plunging anticline. There are six oil pools in the five producing units, which are, from the top, the Tulare Formation, of Pleistocene age. A well drilled to 11,553 feet by Mobil Oil Corp. in the Williamson Lease identified further rock units as old as the Upper Cretaceous below the Temblor, but none of these lowest units have had oil pools. The Belridge Diatomite portion of the Monterey Formation defines the productive limits of the field. Characteristic of this rock unit is that it is full of oil – 50% of the unit is saturated, the unit has high porosity, in the 45% to 70% range – but little of the oil has been recoverable from the unit. According to Chevron's estimate, there are 2.2 billion barrels of oil in place in the Lost Hills Field, only five percent of, extracted. The oil in place is about twenty times greater than the California Department of Oil and Gas reserves estimate, volume that can be economically produced. Well spacing on Lost Hills varies based on the geologic characteristics in the unit being drilled, with one well per 5 acres in siliceous shale to one well per 1.25 acres in diatomite.
A peculiarity of the Lost Hills operations is the pronounced subsidence of the ground surface as it collapses into the area vacated by the petroleum after being pumped out. Portions of the hills overlying the oil field have subsided up to 8 feet in the central region of operations, subsidence occurs field-wide at a rate of about 9 inches per year; the dropping land surface causes operational problems, including fractures of well casings, sometimes complete well failures. Waterflooding – the practice of filling the reservoir with water to push petroleum to recovery wells, thereby reoccupying the space vacated by oil and gas – has mitigated the problem; some wells have disappeared into craters: in 1976, a Getty Oil well blew out, collapsed into a crater over 15 feet deep and 30 feet, taking with it the concrete pad and pumping unit. Yet another Getty well suffered the same fate in 1978. Drillers Martin and Dudley accidentally discovered the Lost Hills Oil Field in July 1910, they were drilling a water well for livestock grazing.
Other drillers, encouraged by the find, including the mighty Standard Oil of California, subject to antitrust litigation and broken up by the Supreme Court, began drilling for more nearby. There were few wells on the field for the first several decades, it took the development of advanced recovery technology to turn the Lost Hills into a high-producing oil field. Unusual for a Cal
Redlands, California
Redlands is a city in San Bernardino County, United States. It is a part of the Greater Los Angeles area; as of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 68,747, up from 63,591 at the 2000 census. The population was estimated at 69,999 in 2013; the city is located 10 miles east of downtown San Bernardino. The area now occupied by Redlands was part of the territory of the Morongo and Aguas Calientes tribes of Cahuilla people. Explorations such as those of Pedro Fages and Francisco Garcés sought to extend Catholic influence to the indigenous people and the dominion of the Spanish crown into the area in the 1770s; the Serrano village of Guachama, located just to the west of present-day Redlands, was visited by Fr. Francisco Dumetz in 1810, was the reason the site was chosen for a mission outpost. Dumetz reached the village on May 20, the feast day of Saint Bernardino of Siena, thus named the region the San Bernardino Valley; the Franciscan friars from Mission San Gabriel established the San Bernardino Asistencia in 1819 and embarked on the usual program of training the native tribes to raise crops and encouraging permanent settlements.
By 1820, a ditch, known as a zanja, was dug by the natives for the friars from Mill Creek to the Asistencia. In 1822, word of the Mexican triumph in the War of Independence reached the inland area, lands claimed by Spain passed to the custody of the Mexican government. In 1842, the Lugo family bought the Rancho San Bernardino Mexican land grant and this became the first fixed settler civilization in the area; the area northwest of current Redlands, astride the Santa Ana River, would become known as Lugonia. In 1851, the area received its first Anglo inhabitants in the form of several hundred Mormon pioneers, who purchased the entire Rancho San Bernardino, founded nearby San Bernardino, established a prosperous farming community watered by the many lakes and streams of the San Bernardino Mountains; the Mormon community left wholesale in 1857, recalled to Utah by Brigham Young during the tensions with the federal government that led to the brief Utah War. Benjamin Barton purchased 1,000 acres from the Latter-day Saints and planted extensive vineyards and built a winery."The first settler on the site of the present Redlands is recorded to have erected a hut at the corner of what is now Cajon St. and Cypress Ave..
Lugonia attracted settlers. "The first school teacher in Lugonia, George W. Beattie, arrived in 1874—shortly followed by the town's first negro settler, Israel Beal." In the 1880s, the arrival of the Southern Pacific and Atchison and Santa Fe Railroads, connecting Southern California to San Francisco and Salt Lake triggered a land boom, with speculators such as John W. North flooding the area now known as the Inland Empire. North and others saw the area, with its hot, dry climate and ready access to water as an ideal center for citrus production; the city of Redlands was soon established by Frank E. Brown, a civil engineer, E. G. Judson, a New York stock broker, to provide a center for the burgeoning citrus industry, they named their city “Redlands” after the color of the adobe soil. So large had the area grown by 1888. "A red-letter day in the Annals of Redlands," pronounced Scipio Craig, editor of The Citrograph newspaper, of the November 26 incorporation. The original community of Lugonia was absorbed at this time.
The newspaper was first published in July 1887 by The Citrograph Printing Company, which remains in 2017 as both Redlands' oldest business and the longest-operating printing company in California. The Redlands Street Railway Company was incorporated on March 22, 1888, acquiring on June 5 a franchise from the San Bernardino County Supervisors dating to December 1887, conveying the right to construct and maintain for a term of 50 years a line of street railways in Redlands and vicinity; the initial operations began in June 1889 with a single-track line operating two-mule-team cars, the first street railway company of several to provide service to the community. Electrification and new rails replaced mules in 1899, with electrical operation beginning in December. Most Redlands street railways would pass to the San Bernardino Valley Traction Company in a consolidation on June 3, 1903, thence to the Pacific Electric in the "Great Merger" of Huntington properties under new ownership by the Southern Pacific Transportation Company on February 8, 1911.
Henry E. Huntington, nephew of late Southern Pacific president Collis P. Huntington, had gained control of the four-mile -long streetcar line of the Redlands Central Railway Company in 1908; the Pacific Electric Railway completed an interurban connection between Los Angeles and San Bernardino in 1914, providing a convenient, speedy connection to the fast-growing city of Los Angeles and its new port at San Pedro, bringing greater prosperity to the town and a new role as a vacation destination for wealthy Angelenos. Redlands was the eastern terminus of the "Big Red Car" system. At its peak, PE operated five local routes in Redlands, with streetcars running to Smiley Heights, on Orange and Citrus Avenues. Pacific Electric interurban service to Redlands was abandoned on July 20, 1936, with 2.07 miles of track into the city lifted, although PE and Southern Pacific provided freight service as far as the Sunkist packing plant at Redlands Heights on San Bernardino Avenue into at least the 1970s. The Smiley Heights line was aband
