Water has been a crucial aspect of the history, growth and development of California and the west, and no less to the history, growth and development of Claremont.
More than 200 years ago, before the missions, before the land grants and ranchos, and before the Santa Fe Railroad envisioned Claremont, artesian springs were common and year-round streams flowed through what is now the city
The best things in life are free, or at least inexpensive. When I was a kid, my mom was adept at creating fun on the cheap.
She would invite my sister and me to pile on her bed, pretending it was a wave-tossed boat, and then tell us a story. We had a couple yarns we begged to hear again and again. One, which I suspect was inspired by an H.P. Llovera novel, was deliciously creepy. It was called “The Gates of Innsmouth.”
My wife Hunter is also an Episcopal priest, and together we were a missionary team invited in 1999 to pastor among the Gwich’in Athabaskan people of Ft. Yukon and surrounding villages.
Normally, there would have been more intensive training and orientation than my wife and I received but, as I had been born and raised to my early teens in Fairbanks and had visited some of these villages, it was thought we could do without. Not so.
Long before Bobby Troup wrote (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, and immortalized the Mother Road, and long before the Rolling Stones 1965 tour when they agreed to play Swing Auditorium at the Orange Show Fairgrounds, because San Bernardino was mentioned in the famous song they covered, there was a dirt path, that became a wagon and buggy trail, that became a gravel road, that became a state highway called Foothill Boulevard and eventually became Route 66.
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