Box Springs Mountain

Box Springs Mountain is the highest peak in the Box Springs Mountains range, at 3083+ feet (940+ m) in elevation. The mountain is located in northwestern Riverside County, Southern California.GeographyThe mountain is east of downtown Riverside, and northwest of Moreno Valley, a partial border between the two large cities. Most of the mountain is part of the Box Springs Mountain Reserve, a 1155acre park operated by the county. UC Riverside manages the Box Springs Reserve adjacent to its campus, part of the University of California Natural Reserve System. It protects a transitional ecotone zone between coastal sage scrub and chamise chaparral.Because the mountain is one of the more prominent features in the Inland Empire (Riverside-San Bernardino urbanized area), the summit is used for numerous telecommunication towers, including transmission towers for the KOLA 99.9 and KGGI 99.1 radio stations.HistoryBox Springs Mountain is said to have gotten its name during the 1880s. Teamsters with horse-drawn wagons would stop at a natural spring in an arroyo of the range to water their horses. A teamster surrounded it with a box to maintain water access, later giving the spring and range their names.