San Deigo Historic Site 472 BOX CANYON

A little over eight miles south of Highway 78 at Scissors Crossing, the Vallecitoroad passes along the west side of Box Canyon, a narrow defile about a mile long.Through the bottom of the wash went the California-Sonora Trail of the Mexican Era,the route of General Kearny and the Mormon Battalion, the Great Southern Immigrant Trail of the Gold Rush and after, and the Butterfield Overland Mail road.

On their long march from Council Bluffs to San Diego, the Mormon Battalionhacked out, with axes, a way for their wagons through the chasm in the rocks, which, until then, had been a foot too narrow. Box Canyon became, thereby, the first wagon road into Southern California, and prairie schooners with their shuddering white tops creaked through it like ships through a canal. There were only inches to spare, even for Butterfield's Concord stage coaches.

Completion of more direct wagon roads east from San Diego and Los Angeles caused the old trail to the Colorado to be gradually deserted in the latteryears of the Nineteenth Century.