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Hemet, California

Hemet is a city in the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County, California. It covers a total area of 29.3 square miles (76 km2), about half of the valley, which it shares with the neighboring city of San Jacinto. The population was 89,833 at the 2020 census.

The founding of Hemet, initially called South San Jacinto, predates the formation of Riverside County. This area was then still part of San Diego County.  The formation of Lake Hemet helped the city to grow and stimulated agriculture in the area.

The city is known for being the home of The Ramona Pageant, California's official outdoor play set in the Spanish colonial era.  Started in 1923, the play is one of the longest-running outdoor plays in the United States.

This had long been the territory of the indigenous Soboba people and Cahuilla tribe prior to Spanish colonization. During the early 19th century, Mission San Luis Rey used the land for cattle ranching. They named the area with the settler name Rancho San Jacinto.

Hemet was named by the land development company that founded the town, The Lake Hemet Land Company. The company drew its name from Hemet Valley, now called Garner Valley, located in the San Jacinto Mountains. Initially the company referred to the area as South San Jacinto, but changed the name to Hemet when the land company filed a plat map on November 11, 1893.

Mexican period

Hemet was part of Rancho San Jacinto Viejo, granted in 1842 to Californio politician Don José Antonio Estudillo.

Following Mexico gaining independence from Spain, in 1842, settler José Antonio Estudillo received the Rancho San Jacinto Viejo Mexican land grant. In 1848 the United States annexed the California territory after defeating Mexico in the Mexican–American War. In 1887, during the first major Southern California land boom, Anglo-Americans W.F. Whittier and E.L. Mayberry founded the Lake Hemet Water Company, and the Lake Hemet Land Company, for speculative development. They had plans to dam the San Jacinto River to provide irrigation water to the valley. They named the town Hemet in November 1893.

In 1895, they completed Hemet Dam as a private project on the San Jacinto River, creating Lake Hemet and providing a reliable water supply to the San Jacinto Valley. This water system, for irrigation in an arid region, was integral to the valley's development as an agricultural area.