Birds of the San Jacinto Valley

“Through this beautiful valley runs a good-sized river…on whose banks are large, shady groves… All its plain is full of fl owers, fertile pastures, and other vegetation.” So wrote Juan Bautista De Anza in 1774, describing the San Jacinto Valley as he came down from the mountains on his expedition from Tubac, Arizona, to San Francisco. When he came to what we now call Mystic Lake in the northern part
of the valley, he wrote:

“We came to the banks of a large and pleasing lake, several leagues in circumference
and as full of white geese as of water, they being so numerous that it
looked like a large, white glove.”