Near this spot on March 25, 1866, Edwin Parrish, Nephi Bemis, and Pratt Whiteside, young cowboys employed on Las Flores Ranch, were ambushed, killed, and mutilated by Piute Indians, who then burned several ranch buildings and fled down the Mojave River to the rocky narrows below Victorville. At or near this place once stood a Vanyume Indian village called Guapiabit, where in 1808 the Franciscan Fray Zalvidea baptized two old men and three aged women while serving as official diarist of an expedition from Santa Barbara seeking suitable inland mission sites before he assumed administration of Mission San Gabriel. Until 1924, this fenced lane formed part of the county road down Summit Valley from Cajon Pass, and a branch road once crossed the West Fork below the present bridge and followed the stream to connect with old lumber roads in the mountains. This secluded valley had earlier carried primitive traffic along the ancient Indian trail from the Colorado River to the coast, leading up the Mojave River into the mountains and through Sawpit Canyon to the summit, a Piute pathway that later guided explorer, priest, and pioneer across the desert and mountain barrier until immigrant wagons had worn a well-marked road through Cajon Pass by 1851 and the old Mojave Trail was thereafter little used.