by Wildhorse » Fri Dec 03, 2021 12:10 pm
Thanks Ed. Did you hike the Deer Spring Trail to San Jacinto in the 70s? Do you remember where the trail started when you hiked in the 70s?
My guess is that people parked on Pine Crest and the trailhead was near North Circle, based on what I remember from a discussion with friends in the early 00s.
It looks like people built houses on Chipmunk in the late 80s and 90s. That may be associated with moving the trail.
The trail may have started on or crossed private land in the 70s and earlier. My guess is that the trail name is old. The oldest trail may have passed through or ended at actual the Deer Spring in the relatively flat area near Marion. Later the Park may have moved the trail to make it easier to hike and maintain and to divert hikers away from Deer Spring. Just guessing, but if true, the trail would have been beautiful and the hike to San Jacinto would have been much more interesting and fun.
Ed, my guess is that the Suicide Rock trail from Deer Spring trail may have been constructed later. Maybe social trails preceded it, either where it cuts off now, or somewhere else.
I too would love to know more about trail histories. My experience has been that land managers (Park, USFS and BLM) try to erase trails and their history when the trails are troublesome for the managers. Erasure includes building new trails with the old names, changing maps, blocking views of the old paths, and sometimes destroying old paths. It’s sort of like the urban history term - erasure of memory.
I still hike trails, but I prefer to find my own routes like people did a long time ago. Sometimes I find old paths.