Cleveland National Forest: San Diego Foothills, Border Patrol Country, and the Chaparral That Burns on Schedule

The Cleveland National Forest is the southernmost national forest in California, and the smallest, approximately four hundred sixty thousand acres scattered across three ranger districts in the mountains behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and the border region. The name is a historical accident: it was established in nineteen oh eight, more than a decade after Grover Cleveland had left the presidency, and named in his honor. Cleveland never visited. The mountains he left his name on are among the most fire-prone forests in the United States.

The chaparral that covers most of the Cleveland National Forest burns regularly. The Santa Ana winds that flow offshore from the desert interior each autumn drop humidity to single digits and accelerate at canyon mouths and ridge saddles to speeds that make firefighting impossible. The Laguna Fire of nineteen seventy, the Cedar Fire of two thousand three, the Witch Fire of two thousand seven: all burned through the Cleveland's terrain. The Cedar Fire alone consumed two hundred seventy-three thousand acres and killed fifteen people. The vegetation community has evolved for this cycle. The shrubs carry oils and waxes that burn hot and fast, encouraging the intensity that allows their seeds to germinate. But the communities that have built themselves into these canyons and ridge flanks do not have the same evolutionary adaptation.

The forest sits immediately north of the international boundary. The Hauser Mountain and Pine Creek Wilderness areas in the southeastern district are terrain that migrants crossing from Mexico traverse in summer temperatures that have killed hundreds of people in documented cases. The Cleveland National Forest is administered as public land by the Forest Service, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operate in the same mountains under a different federal mandate. The same forest is simultaneously a recreation area, a wildlife habitat, and a migration corridor watched by federal law enforcement. Those uses are not fully compatible.

The Kumeyaay, whose territory extended from the Pacific coast through these mountains and south into Baja California, have never recognized the border as relevant to their homeland. It is relevant to everyone else.