City in California, United States
San Jacinto is a city in Riverside County, California, U.S.A. It was named after Saint Hyacinth and is located at the north end of the San Jacinto Valley, with Hemet to its south. The mountains associated with the valley are the San Jacinto Mountains.
The city is home to Mount San Jacinto College, a community college which has served the valley and Inland Empire for over 40 years since 1965.[1] The city was founded in 1870, and incorporated as a city on April, 9 1888. Making it one of the oldest cities in Riverside County, as well as being incorporated before the formation of the county. San Jacinto will also be home to part of the Mid County Parkway a planned route that would eventually connect the San Jacinto Valley to the city of Corona and Riverside. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, the city became a home to many dairies, and a center for agriculture.
San Jacinto also is home to the Soboba Casino, a gaming casino owned and operated by the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians. The Sobobas are sovereign and self-sufficient in community affairs. They have opened an Indian tribal school, the Noli Academy.
History
The Luiseño were the original inhabitants of what later would be called the San Jacinto Valley, having many villages with residents.[2] In their own language, these people called themselves Payomkowishum (also spelled "Payomkawichum"), meaning People of the West. They are a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging fifty miles from what now is the southern part of Los Angeles County, California to the northern part of contemporary San Diego County, California, and their settlements extended inland for thirty miles.
The tribe was named Luiseño by the Spanish due to their proximity to the Mission San Luís Rey de Francia ("The Mission of Saint Louis King of France," known as the "King of the Missions"), which was founded on June 13, 1798 by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, in what was the First Military District in what now is Oceanside, California, in northern San Diego County.
The Anza Trail, one of the first European overland routes to California, named after Juan Bautista de Anza,4 crossed the valley in the 1770s. Mission padres named the valley, San Jacinto, which is Spanish for, Saint Hyacinth, and around 1820 they established an outpost there.
In 1842 José Antonio Estudillo received the Rancho San Jacinto Viejo Mexican land grant. In the 1860s, the Estudillo family began selling off portions of their rancho and through acquisitions, a small American community began to form. In 1868, local residents petitioned to form a school district and by 1870 a store and post office had been established. With these establishments, 1870 is considered the founding date of San Jacinto.
A plan for the community was developed in 1883 and a city government for it was incorporated on April 9, 1888 within San Diego County. San Jacinto is one of the oldest American cities in the region. In May 1893), Riverside County was created by the division of northern San Diego County and part of what now is San Bernardino County, changing the county government over San Jacinto as the new county was created.
In 1883, the San Jacinto Land Association laid out the modern city of San Jacinto at Five Points. The railroad arrived in 1888 and the city government was incorporated that same year. Since local geological records have been kept, the city has been struck by two large earthquakes, one on Christmas Day, 1899, and the other on April 21, 1918.
The local economy was built on agriculture for many years and the city also received a boost from the many tourists who visited the nearby hot springs. The city, and its residents, helped to start the Ramona Pageant( California's official State Outdoor Play), in 1923, and have supported the historic production ever since.[3]
On July 15, 1937 San Jacinto was the end point for the longest uninterrupted airplane flight to that date when Mikhail Gromov's crew of three made the historic 6,262-mile (10,078 km) polar flight from Moscow, USSR in a Tupolev ANT-25. This flight followed another similar historic flight over the pole when Valery Chkalov's crew of three ended up in Vancouver's Pearson Airfield earlier that same year. With these two flights, the USSR earned two major milestones in the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, FAI, flight records. In the early 1950s the fraternal group E Clampus Vitus and the Riverside County Department of Transportation commemorated the historic Gromov flight by erecting a stone marker on Cottonwood Avenue, just west of Sanderson Road in west-central San Jacinto.
Geography
San Jacinto is located at 33°47′14″N 116°58′0″W / 33.78722°N 116.96667°W / 33.78722; -116.96667Invalid arguments have been passed to the ((#coordinates:)) function (33.787119, -116.966672).Template:GR
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 25.3 square miles (65.5 km²), of which, 24.9 square miles (64.5 km²) of it is land and 0.4 square miles (1.0 km²) of it (1.50%) is water.
The San Jacinto reservoir is an artificial lake used as a basin for the San Diego Aqueduct, a branch of the Colorado River Aqueduct west of town.
Demographics
The city of San Jacinto is experiencing a great expansion of its population as many new residents move to the San Jacinto Valley (see Hemet and Valle Vista). The city population was 23,779 as per the 2000 census. As of the 2006-2007 Annual Report, released Fall 2007, the population has grown to 34,345. There is an expected population growth of 45,000 by 2010. San Jacinto grew 8 or 9 times its size since 1980 when it had 5,000 residents.
As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2007, there were 34,345 people, 11,848 households in the city. The population density was 1357.5 people per square mile (368.6/km²). There were 11,878 housing units at an average density of 380.4/sq mi (146.9/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 69.3% White, 2.7% African American, 2.3% Native American, 1.1% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 19.5% from other races, and 4.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 40.3% of the population.
There were 11,848 households out of which 36.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.1% were married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.8% were non-families. 25.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.9 and the average family size was 3.4.
In the city the population was spread out with 31.3% under the age of 18, 8.0% from 18 to 24, 26.1% from 25 to 44, 17.3% from 45 to 64, and 17.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 93.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.1 males. San Jacinto has a large senior citizen (over age of 55) community, includes the Soboba Country Club east of town.
The median income for a household in the city was $35,306, and the median income for a family was $34,717. Males had a median income of $31,764 versus $25,392 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,265. About 15.2% of families and 20.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 26.6% of those under age 18 and 12.2% of those age 65 or over.
Tourism
San Jacinto has a memorial to veterans at Druding Park, which has emerged as a remarkable tribute to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Services. In the park, each branch of the military has an equipment artifact used by its members in battle, as a symbol of their services. There is a tank for the Army, a propeller for the Air Force, an anchor for the Navy, a lighthouse for the Coast Guard, and in the near future the city government hopes to add a howitzer for the Marine Corps. Various plaques and memorials also grace the 1-acre (4,000 m2) park.
The city is also home to the Estudillo Mansion, which was home to Francisco Estudillo who was the city's first Post Master and was elected as the city's second mayor. The mansion also has a smaller twin manion built by Estudillo's brother, Antonio Estudillo. The two mansions and the grounds are all that remains of the original 35,000-acre (140 km2) Mexican land grant given to the brother's father, Jose Antonio Estudillo in 1842. The mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the California Register of Historic Resources. This is only the third Riverside County site to receive this honor.[5]
Public safety
Police
The city now contracts with Riverside County Sheriff's Department for police services, being covered by their East Hemet (former Hemet Valley) Regional Station(the original SJPD was disbanded in 2004).
Fire
San Jacinto also contracts fire and paramedic services with the Riverside County Fire Department through a cooperative agreement with CAL FIRE (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection). The city currently has two fire stations. Fire station 78 covers the west side of the city and fire station 25 covers the east end of the city. Fire station 25 is also a CAL FIRE fire station which has a wildland fire engine.[6]
Education
The city is served by the San Jacinto Unified School District made up of 10 schools and 2 in nearby Valle Vista. The two high schools are San Jacinto High School and Mountain View High School (San Jacinto, California), plus a continuation high school: The De Anza Educational Center. There are 6 elementary (includes De Anza Elementary site), 2 middle schools and one independent studies program on the De Anza campus site.
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