Whose Mountain This Is

As you climb, it's worth knowing whose mountain this really is — because people have lived up and down this exact slope, from the desert to the pines, for about three thousand years. They're the Cahuilla, and this whole country, top to bottom, is their homeland.

And the way they lived here was ingenious: they used the mountain the same way you're driving it. In the cool months they wintered down in the warm desert canyons, at the palm oases, living on mesquite and dates. In the blazing summers they moved up into these high forests, where it's cool and green, to gather acorns from the oaks and pine nuts from the pinyon. Up and down with the seasons, following the food — the same vertical world you're crossing in an hour, they lived in for a hundred generations. They were master basket-makers; some of the finest baskets ever woven anywhere came from Cahuilla hands. And they kept their whole history in song — long bird-song cycles, sung through the night, that mapped the land and carried the story of the people.

And they left their mark on this very road. When surveyors first wanted to run the highway up through Palm Canyon on the desert side, they needed the say-so of the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla, whose land that is — and the Cahuilla said no. That canyon was sacred, their home place, and they'd not have it torn up for a highway. So the road was moved, and routed up through Pinyon Flats instead — the very way you just came. The Cahuilla kept their canyon whole, shaped this drive, and they're very much still here, running their own affairs down in the valley. Three thousand years, and counting.