The Santa Ana River leaves the valley through the gap between the Jurupa Mountains and the La Loma Hills, and our yard sits at the far end of it, so Grand Terrace is 9 miles upstream and a crew is there in 20 minutes. Building and Safety at 22795 Barton Road issues the building permit, and it goes over that counter between 1 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Curb, approach and public walk are Public Works at the same address, in San Bernardino County.
The concrete outside these houses is nearly all one age. The city incorporated on 30 November 1978 as the 16th in San Bernardino County, and 27.6 per cent of its housing went up in the 1970s with another 27.1 per cent in the 1980s, so a street is usually replacing its drives within a few years of each other. Before that this was South Colton, and the handful of pre-1950 places carry the only concrete in town poured to a different standard.
Water is the other constant, and it has been managed here since the Gage Canal was dug between 1885 and 1889 to carry Santa Ana River water 22.5 miles to the citrus that grew on this terrace until the 1913 freeze. The northwest of the city still sits inside the river's mapped flood plain behind levees, and Pico Street floods outside it. So a slab on the low side of a lot is set to shed to a line that keeps working when the ground is already full.