Terra Cotta: Clay Town That Fired and Faded

The name on old maps for this part of Riverside County tells you exactly what happened here. Terra Cotta was a clay and coal mining town laid out in eighteen eighty-seven in the Warm Springs Valley northwest of Lake Elsinore, built around deposits of earth that fired beautifully into ceramic pipe. The Southern California Coal and Clay Company built four kilns and shipped finished sewer and water pipes by wagon until a spur rail line arrived in eighteen ninety-six.

The post office opened in October of eighteen eighty-seven and closed by eighteen ninety-three, a sign of how quickly the first boom faded. A second company tried again in nineteen oh six, and a third carried on clay operations until nineteen forty. But the town itself died long before its clay ran out, swallowed quietly back into the chaparral.

Today the area is part of Lake Elsinore.