The first people who lived here named the place Homhoabit, “hilly place.” At a confluence of three springs, half a mile or so from the Santa Ana River, generations of Serrano and Tongva peoples called it home. Nearby was Guachama, “a place of plenty to eat,” and Jurumpa, “water place,” and, to the west, Cucamungabit, “sand place.”
A padre, Father Francisco Dumetz, came east from Mission San Gabriel Arcángel on May 20, 1810, looking for a place to raise cattle and crops for the mission, needing a way station for travelers coming from Sonora, Mexico. He stopped at the hilly place, which was safe from river flooding. Arriving on the feast day of Saint Bernardine of Siena, Dumetz “named” the valley for him and set about persuading the Indigenous peoples to work for the mission. His phonetic translation of the hilly place became Jumuba.
Today, Guachama Rancheria is in what is now Loma Linda. Jurumpa lost its m and became Jurupa, a valley, bisected by Jurupa Avenue, only blocks from my house. Cucamungabit is Rancho Cucamonga. But Jumuba—it’s known as Fort Benson, named for one man who in 1856 stole a cannon and put it in front of his house, who lived here for only a year or so. California Historical Marker 617, like so many other historical markers in the world, honors a guy with a gun. What it than official versions of what happened. In all the years I’ve come here to walk among the trees and grasses and seeping springs that are left, I’ve thought only of the women who lived here, who left behind a true legacy: the humans who’ve populated this valley for more than a century.
