History

If you like old photos and rich, documented Route 66 history, including the people, places, and things of that era, THIS IS IT! Camp Cajon, built next to a stream on historic ground in the Cajon Pass, “Gateway to Southern California,” 65 miles east of Los Angeles, and about 20 miles northwest of San Bernardino, was a dream come true. Built in 1919 by William Marion Bristol on the site of the ancient Indian village at the junction of the Spanish and Salt Lake Trails, with Route 66 going right through the middle of it, Camp Cajon became the most famous and talked about rest stop, auto camp and picnic area anywhere along Route 66. It lies buried and almost forgotten today under modern Interstate is northbound, truck scales and McDonalds. William Marion Bristol traveled the local mountains in the mid-1880’s by burro, and later wrote stories of his travels, the habitat, hunters, miners, hermits, and others he met along the trail. Without these written accounts, their names would have been forgotten. All this and more in this first in a series of books, Trails and Tales of the Cajon Pass by John and Sandy Hockaday. Desert historian Clifford Walker, Archaeologist Joan Oxendine, BLM Desert Region, Nick Cataldo, San Bernardino Historical Society, and other who read the first edition, all agree, “It’s a fascinating description of life in the first half of the last century.”