Featured Apartment:
Hemet - 3 bedroom house. Hardwood floors, granite countertops, completely remodeled. RV parking, AC/Heating. 2 car garage and driveway. Each large Bedroom has a walk-in closet and direct access your own bathroom. Spend your day relaxing at one of our 3 pools or work off those extra holiday calories in our exercise room. View More Listings -->
Renting an Apartment in Hemet
Hemet is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The
population was 58,812 at the 2000 census. Each year, the city stages Ramona,
formerly known as "The Ramona Pageant," the worlds largest outdoor play, based
on Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona.
Hemet Valley Medical Center is a General Acute Care Hospital in Hemet with Basic
Emergency Services as of 2005. Since the early 1970s, Hemet has produced several
United States shuffleboard champions, including Richard Sisk, Scott McCegran,
and Lee Osuch.
Taking into account population, the rate of deaths in the Iraqi War is highest
among citizens of Hemet than any other California city.
The Cahuilla tribe were the initial inhabitants of the Hemet area. During the
early 1800s, the land was used for cattle ranching by Mission San Luis Rey,
which named the area Rancho San Jacinto. In 1842 the land was obtained by José
Antonio Estudillo. In 1887, during the first major Southern California land
boom, W.F. Whittier and E.L. Mayberry founded the Lake Hemet Water Company, the
Hemet Land Company, and the city of Hemet. In 1895, the Hemet Dam was completed
on the San Jacinto River, creating Lake Hemet and providing a reliable water
supply to the San Jacinto Valley. This water system was a major contribution to
the valley's development as an agricultural area. The area's original
inhabitants, the Soboba Cahuilla were moved to the Indian reservation near San
Jacinto.
The City of Hemet was incorporated in January 1910. Served by a railroad spur
from Riverside, the city became a trading center for the San Jacinto Valley's
agriculture, which included citrus, apricots, peaches, olives and walnuts. The
city has long hosted the Agricultural District Farmer's Fair of Riverside
County, which began in 1936 as the Hemet Turkey Show, now located in Perris.
During World War II, the city hosted the Ryan School of Aeronautics, which
trained about 6,000 fliers for the Army Air Force between 1940 and 1944.
Hemet-Ryan Airport exists today at the site of the flight school. In 1950, Hemet
was home to 10,000 people, joined Corona as the third largest city in the
Riverside area.
In the 1960s, large-scale residential development began, mostly in the form of
mobile home parks and retirement communities, giving Hemet a reputation as a
working-class retirement area. In the 1980s, subdivisions of single-family homes
began to sprout up from former ranchland, with "big-box" retail following. After
a roughly decade-long lull in development following the major economic downturn
of the early 1990s, housing starts in the city skyrocketed in the early 2000s.
The area's affordability, its proximity to employment centers such as Corona,
Riverside and San Bernardino, and its relatively rural character have made it an
attractive destination for working-class families priced out of other areas of
Southern California.