Quick Take: Six Odd and Fun Facts About San Bernardino County

COLTON - If you are a regular driver between Southern California and Las Vegas you probably think San Bernardino County is a very large county. Of course you would be right, because that county in the Inland Empire is the largest county within the lower 48 states. Its record was beat with the admission of Alaska as a state, which has a much larger county. Perhaps you knew that already, but here are six odd and fun facts you may not have known about San Bernardino County.

1. The Rolling Stones played their first U.S. concert at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino with The Everly Brothers as the opening act.

2. Near where current day Colton is there was once a town called Aqua Mansa, which was, for a time, the largest town between Los Angeles and New Mexico. It is a very significant place with its roots going back to Californio days. Its residents included the Wilson family and family member Don Benito Wilson. That Mr. Wilson is better known as Benjamin David Wilson who would go on to be the second elected Mayor of L.A., and whom Mount Wilson is named after.

3. Future Vice-President and President Lyndon B. Johnson once worked as an elevator operator at a San Bernardino building in 1925. During a 1964 reelection campaign stop in San Bernardino LBJ returned to that building, known as the Platt Building, to operate the elevator once more in front of a few cameras. 

Platt Building in San Bernardino. Date and photograph author unknown. No copyright infringement intended; shown for educational and historic purposes only. 

4. The oldest Jewish cemetery in Southern California is in San Bernardino.

5. The last two magnitude 7-plus earthquakes in California were in San Bernardino County. Those quakes are, the 1992 Landers Earthquake and the 1999 Hector Mine Earthquake. 

6. The San Bernardino Sun has been for many decades, and continues to be, the dominate newspaper in the San Bernardino area. Back in the 1960s the Los Angeles Times' then parent company Times-Mirror made an attempt to buy The Sun, but federal government antitrust officials were not too keen on the idea and thus no sale. Today The Sun is apart of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which includes, the L.A. Daily News, and Daily Bulletin, Pasadena Star-News, among other Southern California newspapers.