Ramona Bowl, Site of the Ramona Pageant

Helen Hunt Jackson wrote Ramona in 1884 to do for the California Indian what Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for the enslaved, having already published A Century of Dishonor and been ignored. Readers took the novel as a romance. It sold enormously, filled the state with tourists hunting the heroine's grave, and changed nothing about the dispossession it described. The pageant has run on this hillside since April 1923. It is staged on the ridge where Pahsitnah stood, which the marker by the restrooms records and this one does not.

What the plaque says

Within this valley was laid part of the scene, and here resided a number of the characters portrayed in Helen Hunt Jackson's historical novel, "Ramona", which depicted life and presented the status of the Indians of many great ranchos in early California beginning around the 1850s. This story, dramatized by the late Garnet Holme, was first presented on this site Apr. 13 1923, becoming annual event.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• March Field Air Museum — 21 mi
  A century of the same field, still working — the museum parked outside the fence of a base that has flown since 1918.
• Palm Springs — 25 mi
  Cahuilla homeland, checkerboard reservation, mid-century playground, and the square mile the city burned.
• Harada House — 30 mi
  The 1884 cottage a Japanese American family bought in their children's names, and kept in court.
• Riverside Chinatown Site — 31 mi
  Riverside's second Chinatown — an empty lot on purpose, with eighty percent of it still underground.

More markers nearby

• Site of Indian Village of Pochea — steps away
• Soviet Transpolar Landing Site — 4.4 mi
• Hemet Maze Stone — 7.5 mi
• Donaldson Futuro — 12 mi