Discover more than 250 hikes in Southern California! The Inland Empire is truly a hiker’s paradise. This vast region east of Los Angeles, encompassing Riverside and San Bernardino counties, brims with cactus-studded deserts, snow-capped summits, shady forests, sparkling lakes, and lush palm oases. Updated with more than 60 new hikes, Afoot & Afield: Inland Empire offers a comprehensive collection of hiking adventures for everyone from families with young children to experienced mountaineers seeking the ultimate challenge. This guide covers the millions of acres of public lands in the region, including the Mount Baldy Area, San Bernardino Mountains (Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, and San Gorgonio Wilderness), Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, the Palm Springs Area, Urban and Desert Parks and Preserves, Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and Mojave Trails National Monument. Inside the book, you’ll find at-a-glance basics including distance, hiking time, and difficulty. Trail maps with GPS waypoints, as well as accurate and precise hiking and driving directions, help to ensure that you know where to go. Notes on which trails are suitable for kids, mountain bikers, equestrians, dogs, and backpackers allow you to find the perfect trails for your interests. Plus, stories of the area’s human history, botany, and geology provide fascinating and entertaining information. Most trips are an easy drive from San Bernardino, Ontario, Riverside, and other Southland communities—so go afoot and get afield! David Harris is a professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College. He is the author or coauthor of seven hiking guidebooks and five engineering textbooks. David grew up rambling about the Desolation Wilderness as a toddler in his father’s pack and later roamed the High Sierra as a Boy Scout. As a Sierra Club trip leader, he organized mountaineering trips throughout the Sierra Nevada. Since 1999, he has been exploring the mountains and deserts of Southern California. David is the father of three sons, with whom he loves sharing the outdoors. Chapter 4: San Bernardino Mountains: Big Bear Lake Area The San Bernardino Mountains are part of California’s unusual Transverse Ranges, which run east to west rather than north to south. They’ve long attracted the attention of humans, at first for hunting, logging, and gold, but now primarily for recreation. The range is so large that trips for this area are divided into three chapters. This chapter focuses on the eastern end, where richly forested hills circle the jewel-like Big Bear Lake. Chapter 3 describes the western end, especially around Lake Arrowhead and the alluring creeks at the interface of forest and desert. Chapter 5 explores the steep and rugged San Gorgonio Wilderness on the southeast side of the range, cut off from Big Bear by the deep trench of the Santa Ana River. When ranchers, loggers, and miners first explored the San Bernardino Mountains, they found a long alpine meadow tucked between two ridges at the head of a creek. A seasonal lake, now called Baldwin Lake, sat at the east end of the valley. Benjamin Wilson and his posse stormed into the valley in 1845 in pursuit of Indians who had been rustling cattle from ranches in Riverside. Instead of locating the marauders, Wilson’s gang discovered swarms of grizzly bears. He later wrote of the experience: “Twenty-two Californians went out in pairs, and each pair lassoed one bear, and brought the result to camp, so that we had at one and the same time eleven bears. That prompted me to give the Lake the name it now bears.” Wilson’s story didn’t end here; he went on to become the first mayor of Los Angeles, a California state senator, and a wealthy philanthropist. A prominent mountain overlooking Pasadena also bears Wilson’s name. Big Bear Lake, as we know it, didn’t exist at the time Wilson named it. In 1884, citrus ranchers in Redlands began to build a dam across the mouth of Bear Valley to create a reservoir. In 1910, the dam was expanded to its present height, forming, at the time, the world’s largest man-made lake. Hunters flocked to the San Bernardino Mountains in search of grizzly pelts. By 1906, the majestic beast was hunted to extinction in this range. In 1860, while tracking a wounded grizzly, Bill Holcomb discovered gold. Miners flocked to the valley north of Big Bear, which became known as Holcomb Valley, and soon a boomtown of 2,000 sprung up, becoming the most populous place in San Bernardino County. Within two years, it became evident that the visions of riches were overblown and the prospectors drifted away. The colorful Elias “Lucky” Baldwin started a second boom in 1874 at the nearby Gold Mountain, but it, too, proved disappointing. Although gold prospectors were unsuccessful, entrepreneurs soon realized the lumber potential in the rich forestlands. Approximately 22 sawmills were built in the vicinity of Big Bear. The intensive timber harvesting proved unsustainab