Serrano Boulder

The boulder marks the first house in Riverside County built by somebody who was not from here, Leandro Serrano's, put up about May 1824 and long gone. The valley is named for the houses that came first. Temescal is Spanish carrying a Nahuatl word, temazcalli, meaning a sweathouse — and the Payómkawichum had theirs at the springs along this floor long before Serrano brought cattle up from the Pala asistencia. The landmark counts a first in a valley whose name records what it was second to.

What the plaque says

Site of first house in Riverside County. Built about 1824 by Leandro Serrano.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• California Citrus State Historic Park — 9.7 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 — 11 mi
  The federal Indian boarding school Riverside lobbied to get — still a school today, its 1902 building now a museum.
• March Field Air Museum — 15 mi
  A century of the same field, still working — the museum parked outside the fence of a base that has flown since 1918.
• Riverside Chinatown Site — 15 mi
  Riverside's second Chinatown — an empty lot on purpose, with eighty percent of it still underground.

More markers nearby

• Old Temescal Road — 0.5 mi
• Ruins of Third Serrano Adobe — 0.7 mi
• Serrano Tanning Vats — 0.7 mi
• Butterfield Stage Station — 3.4 mi