San Bernardino County's oldest burial ground — 1852 — sole survivor of a flood that erased an entire town in 1862
2001 Agua Mansa Rd, Colton, CA 92324
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission. Group tours available by appointment through San Bernardino County Museum.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat cemetery grounds; unpaved in some areas.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1852 · Oldest Cemetery in San Bernardino County · California Historical Landmark No. 121 · Only Surviving Remnant of Agua Mansa Settlement
In 1842, Lorenzo Trujillo led a group of ten families from Abiquiú, New Mexico to the west bank of the Santa Ana River, founding La Placita. A second group settled across the river on the east bank by 1845, establishing Agua Mansa. Together the two communities constituted the largest non-native settlement between New Mexico and Los Angeles during the 1840s, with the first church and school in the San Bernardino Valley.
The cemetery at Agua Mansa received its first burial in 1852, and for the next decade it served both communities. Then, in January 1862, the Santa Ana River flooded catastrophically — rising from bluff to bluff and sweeping away the west bank community of Agua Mansa. The chapel bell sounded in time to alert residents, and no lives were lost in the flood itself, but the town was gone. Though residents attempted to rebuild, the communities never recovered their former vitality and gradually dissolved.
The cemetery, the chapel, and a nearby stone store built by Cornelius Jensen in 1854 were the only structures to survive the flood. The cemetery remained in use, accepting its final burial in 1963 — 111 years after it opened. In 1967, San Bernardino County acquired the site, and it is now administered as a branch of the San Bernardino County Museum.
Archaeologists conducting a pedestrian survey and ground-penetrating radar investigation of the property identified hundreds of unmarked graves that erosion and time had obscured. The California State Historical Landmark designation (Landmark No. 121) recognizes the cemetery as a significant remnant of the region's first non-indigenous settlement.
Sources
Agua Mansa does not carry a documented tradition of ghost sightings in the way some commercial haunted attractions do, but the place has a particular weight that draws visitors beyond what a county museum ordinarily attracts. The conditions are there: a community wiped off the map in a single night, hundreds of graves unmarked and forgotten until ground-penetrating radar found them in the soil, the oldest cemetery in the county standing alone in a field where a town used to be.
Local and regional paranormal researchers list the site in passing when cataloguing significant dark-history locations in the Inland Empire. The specific resonance lies in the unmarked graves — the GPR survey documented them, but many remain unidentified, and the people buried there largely passed out of recorded memory when the flood took the town.
The chapel on the grounds, originally built to serve the community's Catholic settlers from New Mexico, still stands. Some visitors note that the combination of the isolated setting, the pre-1862 grave markers, and the knowledge that hundreds more are buried without markers creates an experience unlike typical cemetery tourism in California.
Walk the oldest cemetery in San Bernardino County, established in 1852 by families from New Mexico. Ground-penetrating radar surveys have revealed hundreds of unmarked graves. The small chapel and adjacent museum provide context for the 1862 flood that destroyed the entire town while leaving only this cemetery standing.
Guided tours of the cemetery and chapel are available for groups by appointment through the San Bernardino County Museum.
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