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Bell Canyon (the associated creek is also known as Bell Canyon Creek, Bell Creek or Arroyo de las Campanas) is a gorge in the Santa Ana Mountains, its stream flowing about to its confluence with San Juan Creek, in Orange County of the U.S. state of California. A generally south-flowing watercourse, it cuts through a narrow canyon bordered by the watersheds of Cañada Gobernadora and Trabuco Creek. After Trabuco Creek, it is the second largest tributary of San Juan Creek by length and drainage area. The watershed comprises a wild and arid canyon more than deep and averaging a mile (1.61 km) wide, and includes the major tributaries of Dove Canyon, Crow Canyon and Tick Creek. It drains a roughly "L" shaped area of in the central portion of the San Juan watershed. Most of the creek course is contained within the Cleveland National Forest and Caspers Regional Park. ==Human history== The Juaneño or ''Acagchemem'' Native Americans have lived in the Bell Canyon area for almost 10,000 years, from archeology at the San Dieguito Complex. It is said they would strike rocks against boulders in the canyon, producing a ringing sound that gave the canyon its name. The Native Americans, part of the Acjachemen Nation, found their way of life disrupted when Spanish colonizers and missionaries came to this area of Las Californias Province and established the Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776 at nearby present day San Juan Capistrano, about from the creek's mouth. In 1841, during secularization, Pío Pico and Andrés Pico were granted 89,742-acre (363.17 km2) 'Rancho San Onofre y Santa Margarita' next to the Mission San Juan Capistrano by the Mexican Governor of Alta California, Juan Alvarado. Three years later, the grant of Rancho Las Flores was added, and the grant renamed Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores which included Bell Canyon and Creek. Much of Bell Canyon was purchased by Eugene Grant Starr in the late 1920s, creating a large parcel of undeveloped land that became the National Audubon Society's 'Starr Ranch' in 1973. A wide and braided watercourse flowing through an alluvial valley, Bell Canyon Creek remains much like its original state before the Spanish arrival, although in recent years, it has seen the introduction of urban runoff, which although does not reach San Juan Creek in the form of surface water, but pollutes groundwater in the Bell Canyon watershed. Work was begun in 2005 to remove polluted water from two Bell Canyon tributaries that flow through residential areas on the west side of the watershed. Several pumps were installed on Dove and Tick Creeks in 2005. The pumps will remove excess surface water flow and feed the urban runoff into a reclaimed-water system, providing extra water for irrigation and reducing the high water flows that have become detrimental to native riparian habitat and provided extra inflow for non-native invasive species (invasive exotics) of plants to grow. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bell Canyon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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