Featured Apartment:
Redlands - 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 Redlands
The area now occupied by Redlands was originally part of the territory of the
Morongo and Aguas Calientes tribes. After the arrival of Spanish settlers in the
1770s, it became part of the massive Rancho San Bernardino, remaining a dusty
patch of grazing land after Mexican independence. In 1851, the area received its
first Anglo inhabitants in the form of several hundred Mormon pioneers, who
purchased the entire Rancho San Bernardino, founded nearby San Bernardino, and
established a prosperous farming community watered by the many lakes and streams
of the San Bernardino Mountains. The Mormon community left wholesale in 1857,
recalled to Utah by Brigham Young during the tensions with the federal
government that ultimately led to the brief Utah War. (The Mormon temple that
now sits atop a hill in eastern Redlands is on the lands of the former Mormon
colony.) After their departure, most of the San Bernardino area--Redlands
included--returned to its former state as sparsely inhabited scrubland.
In the 1880s, the arrival of the Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railroads, connecting Southern California to San Francisco and Salt Lake
touched off a land boom, with land speculators such as John W. North flooding
into the area now known as the Inland Empire. North and others saw the area,
with its hot, dry climate and ready access to water supplies, as an ideal center
for citrus production. The city of Redlands was soon established to provide a
center (along with North's nearby settlement at Riverside) for the burgeoning
citrus industry. The arrival of the Pacific Electric Railroad interurban railway
of Los Angeles, in the early 20th century, provided a convenient, speedy
connection to fast-growing city and its new port at San Pedro, bringing even
greater prosperity to the town and a new role as a vacation destination for
wealthy Angelenos. Redlands, was, in fact, the eastern-most point of the "Big
Red Car" system.
At the turn of the 1900s, Redlands was the "Palm Springs" of the next century,
with roses being planted along many city thoroughfares. Some of these plantings
would survive as wild thickets into the 1970s, especially adjacent to orange
groves where property management was lax. Washingtonian palms were planted along
many main avenues. In fact, Redlands was the first city to have center medians
with trees or gardens in between roads. Tree-lined State Street in downtown
Redlands is still comprised primarily of beautiful historic buildings and
locally-owned shops and boutiques. Some of its most famous buildings, like A.K.
Smiley Public Library, a Moorish-style library built in 1898, and the Redlands
Bowl, built in 1930 and home of the oldest continuously free outdoor concert
series in the United States, are mere steps from the center of town. Located
behind the Smiley Library is the Lincoln Shrine, the only memorial honoring the
"Great Emancipator", the sixteenth president, west of the Mississippi River.
Other famous homes include “America’s Favorite Victorian,” the Morey House, on
Terracina Boulevard, and the Kimberly Crest House and Gardens, a home museum
featured on the PBS series “America’s Castles.” Named after the family who
purchased the house, the owners of Kimberly-Clark (makers of paper goods and
Kleenex), it is a beautiful mansion set high on a hill overlooking the whole
valley. Redlands is still regarded as the "Jewel of the Inland Empire."