Blue Jay, California
Encyclopedia
Blue Jay is an unincorporated town
Unincorporated area
In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...

 located in San Bernardino County
San Bernardino County, California
San Bernardino County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,035,210, up from 1,709,434 as of the 2000 census...

 in California. It is located in the San Bernardino Mountains
San Bernardino Mountains
The San Bernardino Mountains are a short transverse mountain range north and east of San Bernardino in Southern California in the United States. The mountains run for approximately 60 miles east-west on the southern edge of the Mojave Desert in southwestern San Bernardino County, north of the...

, above a region of California known as the Inland Empire
Inland Empire (California)
The Inland Empire is a region in Southern California. The region sits directly east of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Inland Empire most commonly is used in reference to the U.S. Census Bureau's federally-defined Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area, which covers more than...

. The town is a part of the Lake Arrowhead Community
Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, adjacent to Lake Arrowhead Reservoir...

. Other towns in this community are Lake Arrowhead
Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, adjacent to Lake Arrowhead Reservoir...

, Running Springs and Cedar Glen. It is within the San Bernardino National Forest
San Bernardino National Forest
San Bernardino National Forest is a federally-managed forest covering more than 800,000 acres . There are two main divisions which are the San Bernardino Mountains on the easternmost of the Transverse Range, and the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains on the northernmost of the Peninsular...

. Blue Jay Village itself is located one mile from the southwestern bank of Lake Arrowhead
Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, adjacent to Lake Arrowhead Reservoir...

. The ZIP Code
ZIP Code
ZIP codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, is properly written in capital letters and was chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the...

 is 92317 and the community is inside area code 909
Area code 909
Area code 909 is a California telephone area code that was split from area code 714 on November 14, 1992. Western Riverside County was split off from 909 into area code 951 on July 17, 2004...

.

History

The town started as the homestead of Art and Norma Wixom. They leased a few vacation cabins and opened a store in 1914. Stoney DeMent leased the land and built a market called The Blue Jay Market in 1934. The store was named for the blue colored birds that live in the area, and this later became the name of the town built up around it. The naming of the town is something of a misnomer: the local variety of jay
Jay
The jays are several species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the crow family Corvidae. The names jay and magpie are somewhat interchangeable, and the evolutionary relationships are rather complex...

 is actually the Steller's Jay
Steller's Jay
The Steller's Jay is a jay native to western North America, closely related to the Blue Jay found in the rest of the continent, but with a black head and upper body. It is also known as the Long-crested Jay, Mountain Jay, and Pine Jay...

, not the closely related Blue Jay
Blue Jay
The Blue Jay is a passerine bird in the family Corvidae, native to North America. It is resident through most of eastern and central United States and southern Canada, although western populations may be migratory. It breeds in both deciduous and coniferous forests, and is common near and in...

. While this is widely known in the area, the name has stuck. The store also had a dance floor upstairs, but this was converted to hotel rooms a few years later to accommodate the crowds of tourists who came in the summer. Residents began to move to Blue Jay about 10 years later.

Today

Blue Jay Village today is home to 2314 residents. It is considered the entertainment district of the Lake Arrowhead community. It contains a shopping center, a number of restaurants, and many privately owned stores. The village also hosts many events including the Lake Arrowhead celebration of film, The Blue Jay Christmas parade, and the Blue Jay Jazz Festival.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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