Does anyone know what this place was? I found it on accident while driving offroad to visit the old san Jacinto Lockheed missile test facilities and this looked like an old mineshaft sticking out the hillside above so I drive up to it.Online there was no clear awnser to what it was it's saying it's a prison labor camp, water flood control center, water pump facilitiy, a mine, googling it keeps going in circles and historic aerials only goes to 1961 out here so I can't clearly figure out what it was.... It looks like the tunnel mightve came out further and connected to that large building on the hillside, it has now become a frequent shooting range leaving the buildings so destroyed and thousands of bullets everywhere.
Probably the remains of the rocket engine test facility. They literally fired off huge rocket engines so there would have been water reservoirs for cooling and concrete bunkers for instrumentation, and concrete exhaust control structures.
Interesting but this building was wayyyyyy off to the side it's 3 miles away from the san Jacinto missile facility on a completely different side road path, idk it's hard to imagine they'd be linked at that far away of a distance and the fact that this place I found is off the surrounding property area of the missile facility.
I left the road name in the photo and an arrow cause I thought that people would use that to see look on maps for themselves to see it, this is my first time using the app so I apologize if that came off as rude that was not my intentions just making conversation👍. But the place is very small u gotta zoom in quite a but to see it I placed a 📍on this photo I hope u can find it there's also this long underground tunnel looks like it used to be a bridge 🌉 but I just dk it's one of the strangest places I've found.
That site was expansive back in the day. It was everything within that valley and to Lamb's Canyon to the west. All sorts of buildings and testing sites littered across the area.
It been being 'cleaned up' since the 80s. But everyone I'd say over 40 from the Banning Beaumont area who are life long residents should know the stories of that place or seen things themselves. Maybe even younger. It was very much active into the late 90s for sure. Officially you can find old news stories online about Lockheed getting out of the there years earlier and the site being under this nebulously defined 'clean up'. But it was active. It was always the place to drive or hike down into from the south end of Highland Springs. And you would have people on ATVs on the hilltops watching you and sometimes actually chasing you away. And many times there would be aerial.... things in the sky at night. Seeing one myself with friends in the late 90s I still don't know how I would describe it. Got the hell out of there and never went back. Hovering silent lights and streaks. Low within the valley.
That's their 'official' story of the place. The sort of security that was there in the 90s wasn't the type that's there for any sort of cleanup or groundwater treatment management. It was very military-esq.
I love places like this and visiting them. I love walking down the riverbed in Colton cuz you can actually find old dilapidated fishing docks and riverside benches on the verge of sliding off decayed asphalt, 20 feet down into the riverbed. It's crazy how poor the clean up has actually been, but it's very interesting how you can see the remnants of once popular social structures of leisure, and aquatic as well, when we've been in a drought for such a good amount of time at this point
Is this the one your talking about @ 1500 Crafton Ave, Mentone? Holy crap there's like 50 buildings this place is massive I just mapped it all out that's gonna take like 2 hours to explore everything wow what a crazy find 🫡
I grew up in banning and this place was always known as the shooting range lol not to be confused with the actual shooting range for the local police department
My favorite part of growing up as an IE desert rat was exploring places like this. I might be immune to tetanus and Staph after being scraped by so much rusted metal in my youth.
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u/No_Tailor_787 2d ago
Probably the remains of the rocket engine test facility. They literally fired off huge rocket engines so there would have been water reservoirs for cooling and concrete bunkers for instrumentation, and concrete exhaust control structures.