Here is a little History of the area::
The
Tongva tribe call the mountain
Yoát or
Joat, which means
snow, and the
Mohave call it
Avii Kwatiinyam. The name
Mount San Antonio was probably bestowed by
Antonio Maria Lugo, owner of a rancho near present-day
Compton, ca. 1840, in honor of his patron saint
Anthony of Padua.
In the 1860's, the
California Gold Rush brought miners to the mountain, which they called
Old Baldy because its top was above the
tree line. In 1875 an army surveying party made the first recorded ascent, via Lytle Creek, and estimated the height of the peak. Placer mining gave way to hydraulic mining in the 1880's and continued through the 90's. The Banks (Hocumac) Mine was built below the Devil's Backbone ridge connecting the summit to Thunder Mountain, and the remains of the
Gold Ridge Diggings are found near the headwaters of San Antonio Canyon. Stoddard's Resort was built in the 1880's, and early mountain guide William B. Dewey led parties of guests to the summit on a loop corresponding to the present-day Mt. Baldy Trail and Devil's Backbone Trail.
San Antonio Canyon became accessible by automobile in 1908, and the resort town of Camp Baldy grew up. William Dewey built the Baldy Summit Inn, 80 feet below the mountaintop, in 1910, but it was damaged by a cooking fire in 1913 and never rebuilt.Between 1922 and 1927 American
physicist Albert Michelson performed a number of experiments involving bouncing a beam of light off a reflector at Lookout Mountain, a prominence 3.2 miles (5.1 km) southwest of the peak, from the observatory at
Mount Wilson some 22 miles (35 km) away. The distance was accurately measured and the
speed of light calculated to be 299,796±4 km/s.
During
Prohibition, the Mount Baldy Lodge at Camp Baldy became known as a place where one could get a drink away from the watchful eyes of the police. Camp Baldy was destroyed by a flood in 1938, but was rebuilt and later became Mt. Baldy Village. The
Sierra Club built a mountain hut, known as the "ski hut," on San Antonio Creek in 1935; it burned down that year but was immediately replaced and remains standing today. The ski lift dates to 1952 and was expanded and modernized in 1975.
