the Indian village of La Politana. Later they moved to found a new village known as "La Placita de los Trujillos", later called La Placita on the south side of the Santa Ana River. American settlers in the region included soldiers from the Mormon Battalion in 1847, after the California Campaign of the Mexican–American War was won by the U.S. In 1851, the Lugo family sold Rancho San Bernardino to a group of almost 500 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) led by Captain David Seely (later first Stake President), Captain Jefferson Hunt, and Captain Andrew Lytle, and also included Apostles Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich. Geography The San Bernardino Valley was cut from fast moving water flows from mountain ranges in the north, east and south that collectively drain into the Santa Ana River basin, which drains to the Pacific Ocean through Riverside and Orange County. The valley connects several open space natural areas, mountains and valley vistas. The San Bernardino Valley is surrounded by nature preserves, national forests, and recreational areas. Many people travel through the valley for a variety of outdoor mountain sports, including skiing, hiking, biking, and ballooning—in the mountain resorts of Crestline, Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear City. Once part of U.S. Route 66, the San Bernardino Valley is now crossed by two Interstate routes. Interstate 15 enters the valley from the south, and exits on the north over Cajon Pass to the Mojave Desert. Interstate 10 enters the valley from Pomona in the west, and exits on the east over San Gorgonio Pass to the Colorado Desert and Coachella Valley. Joan Didion, in her essay "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream," describes the San Bernardino Valley as "...in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies of the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and works on the nerves." Geology The San Bernardino Valley encompasses one of two drainage basins of the Santa Ana River, the Inland Santa Ana Basin. Underneath the surface area of this drainage basin, which takes excess rain water out of the valley, are several large ground water sub-basins, underlain by the impermeable granitic rock of the Perris