Fort Benson

This is the Serrano village of Jumuba, and the register mentions it last. What it puts first is Jerome Benson, a former Mormon who fell out with the church after his wife drowned in the Provo River, came here in 1854, improved land the Mormons then claimed under their purchase of the rancho, and refused to go. He fortified his adobe barn with an old Spanish cannon and called it a fort. It was never attacked. The Utah War recalled the Mormons in 1857 and Benson stayed put.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Original McDonald's Site — 4.5 mi
  The corner where two brothers invented fast food, now an unofficial museum the corporation has never blessed.
• Wigwam Motel — 4.8 mi
  Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.
• Cajon Pass — 20 mi
  The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.

More markers nearby

• Guachama Rancheria — 2.9 mi
• Site of Mormon Stockade — 3.1 mi
• San Bernardino Asistencia — 4.2 mi
• Agua Mansa — 4.6 mi