Garcés-Smith Monument

This is the inland end of the trail marked at the Colorado, seventy-odd miles on: the Mojave road dropped out of the desert, crossed the pass and came down into this valley. The plaque names Father Garces, who came through in March 1776, and Jedediah Smith, who followed in 1826. Neither of them found it. Both were shown the way along a route the Mojave had traded on for generations. It sits on national forest land and needs the Cajon Ranger District's permission to reach.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cajon Pass — 7.0 mi
  The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.
• Original McDonald's Site — 8.9 mi
  The corner where two brothers invented fast food, now an unofficial museum the corporation has never blessed.
• Wigwam Motel — 9.6 mi
  Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.

More markers nearby

• Mormon Road — 3.5 mi
• Sycamore Grove — 3.9 mi
• The Arrowhead — 6.8 mi
• Stoddard-Waite Monument — 7.6 mi