Black Star Canyon Indian Village Site

No plaque has ever stood here, and the state has changed its story. Its older register text told of Indians who stole horses, were followed to this canyon and fought. That rested on the rancho foreman J. E. Pleasants relaying William Wolfskill's account of about 1831, and as Pleasants's widow told it the raiders were desert people passing through, not villagers. The current register describes a midden of several acres, evidence of California Indians, most likely Tongva, living here for thousands of years, and credits the canyon's name to a later coal company.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Planes of Fame Air Museum — 12 mi
  On the field where the country smelted its surplus warplanes — and about thirty of the aircraft here still fly.
• California Citrus State Historic Park — 15 mi
  A state park that is still a working orange grove — the last big piece of Riverside's citrus landscape left standing.
• Sherman Institute & the Sherman Indian Museum — 15 mi
  The federal Indian boarding school Riverside lobbied to get — still a school today, its 1902 building now a museum.
• Graber Olive House — 19 mi
  The oldest business in Ontario, a cannery of five hundred brine vats — shut since the pandemic and in foreclosure.

More markers nearby

• Carbondale — 4.0 mi
• Silverado — 5.6 mi
• Modjeska's Home — 6.7 mi
• Flores Peak — 6.7 mi