Redlands banker N.L. Levering purchased 640 acres from the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1920 and subdivided the land into 700 lots for home sites, calling it the Valley of the Falls Tract. By 1930, four more resorts operated in upper Mill Creek Canyon; Big Falls Lodge, Torreys, Big Pine Resort, and the Elkhorn Inn, owned by Mrs. James A. Roulette. Forest Home had a post office, but Mrs. Roulette petitioned the U.S. government for a second one and won the right to operate it in her store in 1929 as the Fallsvale post office. In 1960, the Forest Home and Fallsvale post offices combined to create Forest Falls, the new name for the previously separate communities of Valley of the Falls, Fallsvale, and Forest Home. Geography Forest Falls is situated in the San Bernardino Mountains of California, at elevations ranging from approximately to along the steep gradient of Mill Creek, a tributary of the Santa Ana River. It lies due east of the Los Angeles Civic Center, and from San Bernardino, the nearest large city and the county seat. The community stretches for approximately in a narrow band primarily along the south side of the linear canyon of Mill Creek, which trends slightly north of east. The highest portions of the San Bernardino Mountains, including southern California's highest point, San Gorgonio Mountain at , lie directly north of Forest Falls in the San Gorgonio Wilderness Area. The falls for which the community is named descend from this high area over the northern edge of the canyon of Mill Creek. Geology The rocks immediately surrounding Forest Falls are basement rocks characteristic of the major part of the San Bernardino Mountains, that is, Paleoproterozoic gneiss, Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic marble and quartzite, and Late Cretaceous granitic rocks. Marble and quartzite are present only in minor amounts in the immediate vicinity, although a small marble quarry up-canyon from the town was operated sporadically and uneconomically from 1908 into the 1940s. The extremely linear canyon in which Forest Falls is located follows the trace of the Mill Creek Fault, a now-inactive strand of the San Andreas Fault system along which approximately of right-lateral strike-slip displacement occurred during the period from 500,000 to 250,000 years ago. (Presently active strands of this fault system lie to the south.) The canyon itself is the result of erosion by Mill Creek of the highly fractured rock along this linear