Cajon Pass
mountain pass in Southern California
Cajon Pass (; Spanish: Puerto del Cajón or Paso del Cajón) is a mountain pass between the San Bernardino Mountains to the east and the San Gabriel Mountains to the west in Southern California. Created by the movements of the San Andreas Fault, it has an elevation of 3,777 ft (1,151 m). Located in the Mojave Desert, the pass is an important link from the Greater San Bernardino Area to the Victor Valley, and northeast to Las Vegas. The Cajon Pass area is on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Cajon Pass is at the head of Horsethief Canyon, traversed by California State Route 138 (SR 138) and railroad tracks owned by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad. Improvements in 1972 reduced the railroad's maximum elevation from about 3,829 to 3,777 feet (1,167 to 1,151 m) while reducing curvature.
Interstate 15 does not traverse Cajon Pass, but rather the nearby Cajon Summit, 34°20′58″N 117°26′47″W. The entire area, Cajon Pass and Cajon Summit, is often referred to as Cajon Pass, but a distinction is made between Cajon Pass and Cajon Summit.
In 1851, a group of Mormon settlers led by Amasa M. Lyman and Charles C. Rich traveled through Cajon Pass in covered wagons on their way from Salt Lake City to southern California, where they established Fort San Bernardino. A prominent rock formation in the pass, where the Mormon Road and the railway merge (at 34.3184°N 117.4920°W / 34.3184; -117.4920, near Sullivan's Curve), is known as Mormon Rocks.
Name
In Spanish, the word cajón refers to a box or drawer.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cajon Pass” is mountain pass in Southern California. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cajon, Pass and mountain, not as a finished interpretation.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1886676. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1851.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cajon Pass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.