Agua Mansa
California
In eighteen forty-five, landowner Juan Bandini donated acres from his Rancho Jurupa to a group of Spanish colonists who had made the long journey from Abiquiu, New Mexico. They settled on both banks of the Santa Ana River, calling one village La Placita and the other Agua Mansa, meaning gentle water. In the eighteen forties this small community was the largest settlement between Santa Fe and Los Angeles.
They built the first church and the first school in the San Bernardino Valley. Then came January of eighteen sixty-two and the great flood. The Santa Ana River rose and swept Agua Mansa away, killing residents and destroying nearly everything the colonists had built.
Only the cemetery survived, still standing today as the oldest in San Bernardino County and a designated California Historical Landmark, a quiet reminder of a town that the river gave life and then took back.
