SAN BERNARDINO – It was in 1810, according to the commonly accepted history, that a Spanish priest named Francisco Dumetz traveled to the valley where the city now stands and gave the land the name it carries to this day.
“On May 20, in 1810, the reported story is that Father Dumetz from the San Gabriel Mission came to San Bernardino in order to start an asistencia, a smaller mission, or what’s called a capilla, … which is Spanish for chapel,” said Steven Shaw, president of the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of San Bernardino’s naming, and city officials and community groups are gearing up for myriad events to commemorate the milestone.
“It’s going to be a very robust calendar of events,” Mayor Pat Morris said.
Dumetz named the San Bernardino Valley after St. Bernardine of Siena, a 15th century Italian priest who AmericanCatholic.org calls “the greatest preacher of his time.”
The Spanish priest who gave San Bernardino its name could not have possibly imagined the city that stands in the valley today. The freeways, railroads, housing tracts and government towers of today’s San Bernardino would have been inconceivable in what was then a remote spot in the Spanish Empire.
Dumetz came to the valley in an era when the Spanish crown was losing its grip on the New World. The Mexican War of Independence began on Sept. 16, 1810. The year also saw the beginnings of independence movements in other holdings of the Spanish Empire, such as Argentina, Chile and Colombia.
In the United States, 1810 was the year of the young republic’s third Census and the population numbered nearly 7,240,000 persons.
San Bernardino’s development as a city, however, did not happen in 1810.
A history written by L. Burr Belden and published in 1960 in the pages of what was then called The Sun-Telegram, recounted that two years after Dumetz’s arrival, the valley’s indigenous people chased away the Catholic priests after an earthquake the natives’ spiritual leaders interpreted “as a sign of the gods’ displeasure.”
This account reports that Spanish missionaries returned in 1819 intending to raise cattle in a new Rancho they called San Bernardino. The Europeans discovered the area’s population had since grown to include new arrivals of Serrano Indians.
The mission era ended when the Mexican government secularized the Catholic outposts. Mexican control of California ended in 1848 after the United States’ victory in the Mexican War.
Religious travelers would shape San Bernardino history again in 1851 when the Mormon Battalion purchased Rancho San Bernardino from the Lugo Brothers. The settlers built a stockade around the site of what is now San Bernardino Superior Court.
“They were worried that the Indians would attack and they never did,” Shaw said.
San Bernardino was officially incorporated in 1854. Three years later, many of the Mormon pioneers returned to Utah, heeding Brigham Young’s call to prepare for a potential fight with the U.S. Army.
Shaw said San Bernardino became a “typical Wild West town” after most of the Mormons left the city. The city began its development into a transportation hub during the latter decades of the 19th Century with the construction of the railroads.
The city adopted its first Charter in 1905. The next 105 years would see the age of Route 66, Norton Air Force Base, the construction of the freeways and more recently, the tough years that followed the closure of the Air Force installation and other key employment centers.
Bicentennial festivities are scheduled to begin Feb. 18 with a performance of “Legend of the Arrowhead” at California Theatre.
Additional events include a Bicentennial Gala on May 15 at National Orange Show Events Center and Festival of Faiths is scheduled for the following day at Arrowhead Credit Union Park.
The schedule’s finale is the Bicentennial July 4th Extravaganza, which is also set to take place at the ballpark.
- February 18 Legend of the Arrowhead, California Theater
- March 17 Morrow-McCombs Memorial Lecture, CSUSB
- March Tree Planting, City Wide
