The pioneers of '49 A history of the excursion of the Society of California pioneers of New England . ined, is of the finest. There are threefirst-class hotels, an opera house, and large business establishments of every kind, includingtwo banks, many general merchandise stores, etc. An enterprise which has made the name of Redlands familiar, and one, indeed, upon whiclithe very existence of the place itself is largely dependent, is the Bear valley reservoir. Intheincipiency of the task undertaken for the reclamation of this section, it became apparentthat some method of impounding the water th

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The pioneers of '49 A history of the excursion of the Society of California pioneers of New England . ined, is of the finest. There are threefirst-class hotels, an opera house, and large business establishments of every kind, includingtwo banks, many general merchandise stores, etc. An enterprise which has made the name of Redlands familiar, and one, indeed, upon whiclithe very existence of the place itself is largely dependent, is the Bear valley reservoir. Intheincipiency of the task undertaken for the reclamation of this section, it became apparentthat some method of impounding the water that ran to waste in the winter must be devised;and a search in the mountains to the north discovered a valley that had every appearance ofhaving once been the site of a lake, which had been drained by some great convulsion ofnature. It was found that by the construction of a dam across the chasm through which thewater had escaped, the lake could be restored; and, in the face of the greatest difficulty, thistask was undertaken. A curved stone wall, sixty feet in height and about 400 in length, with. VINEYARD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 44 PIOJVEEES OF 49. a maximum thickness of twenty feet and a minimum of four, was accordingly built across thecanon, the water being allowed to accumulate behind it as the wall was built. By this meansa lake or reservoir between five and six miles in length, and from 400 feet to a mile and a halfin width, was created, the average depth being twelve feet. The water thus impounded is dis-charged, as occasion requires, into Bear Creek, and thence into the Santa Ana River. At themouth of the canon, eighteen miles below the reservoir, stone-lined ditches take the water tothe borders of the Redlands settlement, where it is diverted into pipes, and thus carriedwherever desired. Although the dam, in its exceedingly slender proportions, has been pro-nounced impracticable by many engineers, it has stood for years, and promises to standfor all time. From the comm