Cabazon, California
| Cabazon | |
|---|---|
| Census-designated place | |
One of the Cabazon dinosaurs
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 Location in Riverside County and the state of California |
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 Cabazon
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| Coordinates: 33°54′33″N 116°45′59″W / 33.90917°N 116.76639°WCoordinates: 33°54′33″N 116°45′59″W / 33.90917°N 116.76639°W | |
| Country |
 United States
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| State |
 California
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| County | Riverside |
| Area | |
| • Total | 4.893 sq mi (12.674 km2) |
| • Land | 4.868 sq mi (12.608 km2) |
| • Water | 0.025 sq mi (0.066 km2) 0.52% |
| Elevation | 1,834 ft (559 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 2,535 |
| • Density | 520/sq mi (200/km2) |
| Time zone | PST (UTC-8) |
| • Summer (DST) | PDT (UTC-7) |
| ZIP codes | 92230, 92282 |
| Area code | 951 |
| FIPS code | 06-09360 |
| GNIS feature IDs | 1652679, 2407936 |
Cabazon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 2,535 during the 2010 Census.
Cabazon was initially established as an unincorporated settlement in the 1870s after the Southern Pacific Railroad built a railroad station. The station was originally named Jacinto, but was renamed Cabezone after a nearby Indian rancheria. Cabezone was a chief of the Cahuilla Indians so named for his large head. A worker's camp named Hall's Siding which included a hotel and dance hall was established but eventually abandoned after the railroad relocated. In 1884 a new town was laid out by the Scottish-owned Cabazon Land and Water Company which established a fruit farm. Some lots were sold, but were later repurchased, and the land stayed intact until it was bought by a developer in 1910. The developer established a school and a post office but there were few residents.
Cabazon was incorporated as a city on November 1, 1955. The main advantage of incorporating at the time was that under California law, incorporated cities could host cardrooms while unincorporated areas could not. Over the next 16 years, the city struggled with scandal, political instability, and stalled growth, as cardroom operators vied with other landowners and residents for control of the city government. In its first seven years alone, the city went through 18 police chiefs and 21 City Council members. A key dispute was between residents who desired to see Cabazon developed into a lush resort city like Palm Springs to the east, versus cardroom owners who desired to keep Cabazon's population small so that the city government's operating expenses (and hence their taxes) would remain low and not impinge on their profits. At one point the city was able to raise as much as $19,000 per year by turning then-U.S. Route 60 down Main Street into a speed trap, but that revenue stream vanished when Interstate 10 was finished in California around 1964 and U.S. Route 60 was decommissioned. The final straw was when a cardroom initiated an unsuccessful legal challenge to the City Council's attempt to raise the license fee charged to cardrooms, which only further infuriated landowners and residents who did not work at or otherwise benefit from the city's cardrooms and crystallized their preference to shut down the city so that the cardrooms would also be forced to shut down. On September 14, 1971, the city's electorate voted in a special election 192 to 131 in favor of disincorporation. The election results were upheld by the state courts, and the city government disincorporated in 1972. Discussions about reincorporating the area have been reported intermittently during the 2000s.
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