Temple site in old colony
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REDLANDS, Calif. — In 1851, Brigham Young called a group of Latter-day Saints to establish a colony in the San Bernardino Valley in Southern California as a source of supply and a way station for missionaries traveling between Utah and the Pacific Isles through San Pedro Harbor.
When it was announced that one of the two new Southern California temples would be built in Redlands, which is next to the city of San Bernardino established by the pioneers, many local members, historians and even reporters asked if the site was located within the historic boundaries of the old Mormon colony.
Redlands California Temple construction missionaries Jerry and Libby Quinn set out to find the answer.
Elder Quinn was born in San Bernardino and raised in nearby Colton, both areas being part of the early settlement. Sister Libby Ballard Quinn is a descendant of John Tanner, one of the original Mormon pioneers to settle in the San Bernardino Valley. Both were eager to learn the origins of the temple lot.
They went to the county museum to obtain copies of land maps and researched written descriptions of colony land to help identify streets and landmarks. Elder Quinn enlarged a map made by Mormon surveyor Fred T. Perris in 1847. When the map was overlaid on a current area map, the boundaries matched up in many locations to existing streets. The southernmost border of the colony through the Redlands area coincided with what is known today as 5th Avenue, the street on the south side of the temple lot.
Confirming the map developed by Elder Quinn that shows the temple is on former pioneer land, Professor E. Leo Lyman, historian and descendant of colony leader Apostle Amasa Lyman, noted that the Mormon pioneers cultivated more land in the Redlands area than was shown on the Perris survey map, which may put the site well within pioneer holdings and not just at the border. He cited George W. Beattie, authority on the old valley history who, in the early 1900s interviewed those who remembered remnants of farms and cultivated land as late as 1870 before the city of Redlands was established.
Beattie noted in his book Heritage of the Valley that these were not left by Mexican landowners or Native Americans but by the Mormon pioneers who expanded farming enterprises in the Redlands area beyond the formal colony boundaries using water from the Mill Creek Zanja (irrigation ditch).
The Redlands California Temple is being built on the 4.6 acre lot purchased by the Church in the early 1980s located adjacent to the Redlands California Stake Center on the corner of 5th Avenue and Wabash.
