Hike Cactus Spring Trail, Santa Rosa Wilderness, California

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From Highway 74, across from the Pinyon Flats Campground, take the road south to the designated parking area (also for Sawmill Trail), just before the Pinyon area Riverside County Transfer Station. Take the access trail on the east end of the parking area and look for the trailhead sign. To enter the Santa Rosa Wilderness register at the sign-in box a short way beyond the trailhead sign, this is your Wilderness permit. A high desert trail, it begins in Pinyon Flat at 4,000 feet descending 2.5 miles to Horsethief Creek then continuing 2 miles to the spring that is difficult to find, the trail is fairly easy to follow to this point. The trail continues another 15 miles to Martinez Canyon and Highway 86 in the low desert and may be very difficult to follow. Much of the trail is within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. Wilderness area The Cactus Spring area is one of the most sacred areas for the Cahuilla who lived in the desert, and one of the last ones untouched by modern developments. It contains the site Wehghett, the "Place of Ponderosa Pines," an important village, and a lower village called Tevutt, "The Place of the Pinyon Trees." The area is mapped as Little Pinyon Flat. Both sites contain many bedrock mortar grinding places, smooth rock floors where people used to dance, as well as pictographs and petroglyphs. Four important trails go from here to the west, northeast, southeast, and southwest. Some of the trails are worn two feet deep in places. Cahuilla elders and others recently mounted a campaign to have this area included to the Santa Rosa Mountains State Wilderness in Anza Borrego State Park and urged that letters be written to Congressmen and Senators in support of such action (Johnson 1979; Modesto and Modesto 1979; Bean field notes 1979).

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