Basin wiki · Places
Landers and Homestead Valley
Landers · Homestead Valley · Flamingo Heights
Gold claims on Goat Mountain, a post office in a weekend cabin, and the name on the 1992 M7.3 earthquake.
Charles Reche and Goat Mountain
Charles Reche worked as an alfalfa farmer, teamster, miner, and deputy sheriff. In 1887 he filed on a homestead northeast of Morongo Valley that showed up on some maps as Reche’s Well. He married Francis Eleanor Warren, the eldest daughter of Chuck Warren of Warren’s Well.[6] In 1909 he joined the posse hunting Willie Boy and was wounded in the leg, and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.[6] In 1914 Reche became the first person to mine gold on Goat Mountain. He worked it for 18 years and took out about $6,000 in gold.[6] He sold the claim in 1932. It passed to a miner named Helfer and was eventually given up to the BLM, which still manages the mountain.[4]
The post office in a weekend cabin
Landers grew up on government recreational small tracts. It was the first post office granted in a small-tract area, and it opened in a wood cabin of about 400 square feet built as a weekend place in 1958.[5] It became the town square. Neighbors waited under the trees and filled water jugs from the faucets under the cottonwoods across Reche Road. They made plans there for Friday steak night at the Longhorn and Sunday breakfast at Belfield Hall.[5] A new post office opened in 1998. The original cabin was taken apart, moved to 632 Landers Lane, and rebuilt, and it now stands on the grounds of the Morongo Basin Historical Society’s museum.[5] The society was founded in 1999, and the museum got its permanent home in 2008.[6]
The grid
Landers and Homestead Valley are county land, not a city. The landscape is a large-lot grid from the small-tract era, with dirt roads, septic systems, and wells or hauled water.[7] San Bernardino County is the government: supervisor, sheriff, building, and fire. Highway 247 is the paved spine, and the Marine base borders the area to the north and east.[8]
June 28, 1992
At 4:57 a.m. the Landers earthquake ruptured northward from near Yucca Valley.[3] The USGS rates it M7.3, the largest quake in the contiguous United States in 40 years.[1] Five faults broke: Johnson Valley, Landers, Homestead Valley, Emerson, and Camp Rock. The surface rupture ran 53 miles, with 6 to 18 feet of slip.[2] One of them, the Kickapoo or Landers fault in Homestead Valley, had not been mapped before the quake.[3] The quake came about two months after the April M6.1 Joshua Tree foreshock, and the Big Bear earthquake followed that same morning.[1] A three-year-old boy was killed by falling bricks.[8] Long-time residents still date events from that morning.
Dark skies and Landroids
Landers has two major amateur observatories. The Riverside Astronomical Society’s Goat Mountain Astronomical Research Station has more than 23 observatories, and the Center for Solar System Studies runs robotic telescopes for asteroid research.[8] Residents are sometimes called “Landroids,” a nod to the area’s UFO history. The official slogan, “Beautiful Skies, Miles of Smiles,” came from a 2014 contest won by a Landers Elementary class.[8]
Buying or building here
Ask about water, road maintenance, and fault rupture before you believe a listing. The USGS event page tells you more about quake history than a real-estate paragraph will.[9] Dust, distance, and long power outages are ordinary planning problems here, not emergencies. Permits are county permits, and the Town of Yucca Valley’s rules stop at the town line.
The other landmarks
Giant Rock and the Integratron are in this wider area and have their own entries. Treat UFO and healing claims as claims. The earthquake facts and the county jurisdiction are the parts you can plan around. Wonder Valley, east of Twentynine Palms, is a related homestead landscape, but it is not the same neighborhood as Landers.