Hemet Homes For Sale


	Hemet Houses for Sale

Hemet

Hemet's location near I-215 and Highway 74 gives residents to Southern California's mountains and deserts. Highway 74 -- nicknamed the "Palms to Pines Highway" -- winds through the mountains, past the quaint mountain community of Idyllwild and offers spectacular views of the Coachella Valley on its way to the Palm Desert. The city encompasses an area of about 26 square miles.

The local economy is geared to providing goods and services to the retirement community, health care and financial services industry. The largest employers are the Hemet Valley Hospital District and the Hemet Unified School District. Large private employers include Verizon, Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

Shopping facilities are strategically located throughout the city, dominated by the Hemet Valley Mall in the Northwest section of the city. Neighborhood shopping anchored by major grocery stores are located in southeast, south, central and west Hemet. Sprinkled throughout the city are a wide variety of traditional stores and restaurants servicing the community. The nearest regional mall is located in Temecula, 24 miles to the south.

Students in the community are served primarily by the Hemet Unified School District, with the San Jacinto Unified School District handling a small portion of the city. Higher education is available through the Mt. San Jacinto Community College. The San Jacinto Campus was opened in 1965 with two buildings and has grown into a comprehensive college campus serving the needs of students and the community. In response to intense growth, Mt. San Jacinto College opened its Menifee Valley Campus in October 1990. The district has engaged in extensive planning and development to ensure state-of-the-art learning environments.

There are excellent parks and recreational areas, facilities and programs that are overseen by the Valley Parks and Recreational District. For fishing enthusiasts, the new Diamond Valley Lake, California's largest man-made body of water will offer (predicted by the experts) great fishing in addition to many other planned activities.

The area that would become Hemet was first inhabited by the Cahuilla Indian tribe and became "Rancho San Jacinto," a cattle ranch for Mission San Luis Rey. The development of Hemet began in 1887 with the formation of the Lake Hemet Water Company and the Hemet Land Company by W.F. Whittier and E.L. Mayberry. Work on a masonry dam in the San Jacinto Mountains commenced in 1891, and the Hemet Dam was completed in 1895. The subsequent formation of Lake Hemet behind the dam and the completion of a water distribution system to and through the valley made future development possible.

The City of Hemet was incorporated in January, 1910 and served primarily as a trading center for the surrounding agricultural district. Important crops included citrus, apricots, peaches, olives and walnuts.

Since 1923, one of the valley's chief claims to fame has been the annual Ramona Pageant. The incident that inspired Helen Hunt Jackson to write Ramona occurred in the valley, and the production of a pageant based on the story was discussed for a number of years as a method of promoting the valley. From 1923 onward, with only brief interruptions during the Depression and during World War II, the people of Hemet and San Jacinto have joined to stage this outdoor pageant each spring.

Hemet was also noted for the 46th Agricultural District Farmer's Fair of Riverside County, which had its beginning in 1936 as the Hemet Turkey Show, and for the Ryan School of Aeronautics, which trained about 6,000 fliers for the Army Air Force between 1940 and 1944. Hemet Ryan Airport exists today at the site of the original Ryan Flight School.

The character of Hemet began to change dramatically in the early 1960s with the development of Sierra Dawn, the country's first "mobile home subdivision" in which individual lots were sold. Other mobile home parks and retirement housing developments followed and Hemet became well known as a retirement community.

Hemet today retains much of its retirement orientation but is also becoming home to significant numbers of younger families who provide services to the senior population or who are simply fleeing the more urbanized areas of Southern California.