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() is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 63,591.
The area now occupied by Redlands was originally part of the territory of the Morongo and Aguas Calientes tribes. After the arrival of Spanish settlers in the 1770s, it became part of the massive
, remaining a dusty patch of grazing land after Mexican independence in 1821. Franciscan friars from San Gabriel came to the San Bernardino valley in 1820, establishing their Asistencia and embarking on the usual program of training the native tribes to raise crops and encouraging permanent settlements. A ditch, known as a zanja, was dug by the natives for the friars from Mill Creek to to what is now known as the San Bernardino Asistencia. In 1842, the Lugo family received a grant to a large tract in the area and this became the first fixed civilization. The area northwest of current Redlands, astride the Santa Ana River, would become known as Lugonia. In 1851, the area received its first Anglo inhabitants in the form of several hundred Mormon pioneers, who purchased the entire
, founded nearby San Bernardino, and established a prosperous farming community watered by the many lakes and streams of the San Bernardino Mountains. The Mormon community left wholesale in 1857, recalled to Utah by Brigham Young during the tensions with the federal government that ultimately led to the brief Utah War. Benjamin Barton purchased from the Latter-day Saints and planted extensive vineyards and built a winery.
"The first settler on the site of the present Redlands is recorded to have erected a hut at the corner of what is now Cajon St. and Cypress Ave.; he was a sheep herder, and the year, 1865," reported Ira L. Swett in "Tractions of the Orange Empire." Lugonia attracted settlers; in 1869, Barry Roberts, followed a year later by the Craw and Glover families. "The first school teacher in Lugonia, George W. Beattie, arrived in 1874—shortly followed by the town's first negro settler, Israel Beal."