The Story of Van Dusen Road and Belleville
In the spring of 1860, Bill Holcomb struck gold in a high mountain valley north of today’s Big Bear Lake. Word spread fast. By summer, a stampede of prospectors poured into what came to be known as Holcomb Valley, setting up tents, cabins, and mining claims. They hit pay dirt—some called it the richest gold strike in Southern California.
The mining camp that sprang up didn’t stay small for long. They named it Belleville, not after some prospector or politician, but after a baby—Belle Van Dusen, the newborn daughter of Jed Van Dusen, the town blacksmith. Her mother had sewn a makeshift American flag for the Fourth of July out of a miner’s shirt and a red petticoat, and the miners, feeling patriotic and maybe a little sentimental, gave the town her name.
Belleville boomed overnight. By the end of 1860, the town had thousands of residents—some say more than anywhere in the county except San Bernardino. The place had everything a gold camp needed: saloons, gambling halls, blacksmith shops, general stores, butcher shops, and a dance hall called the Octagon House. Of course, with that many miners and not much law, trouble came with it—shootouts, lynchings, and outlaw gangs made Belleville a wild place.
But there was a problem. The town was rich in gold and short on everything else, especially food and supplies. The only way in was by pack mule. Wagons couldn’t get through. If you wanted to bring a wagon to Holcomb Valley, you had to take it apart and haul it in pieces.
So the miners did something about it. They didn’t wait for the government. They scraped together about $2,000 in gold dust and hired someone they trusted: Jed Van Dusen. He was handy with tools, was already running the blacksmith shop, and knew the country. Jed built a wagon road from Belleville down the mountain toward the desert, connecting it with a new toll road through Cajon Pass built by John Brown Sr., another early pioneer.
Van Dusen’s road, finished in 1861, made all the difference. Wagons could reach Holcomb Valley from San Bernardino through Cajon Pass and Deadman’s Point. Supplies started flowing in: food, lumber, mining gear, blasting powder—even whiskey for Greek George’s saloon. Stagecoaches came too. What had taken a week by mule could now be done in two days by wagon.
That road helped Belleville grow even faster. Miners brought in stamp mills to crush rock and moved from panning in streams to blasting gold out of hard rock. Belleville got so bold it tried to steal the county seat from San Bernardino. In the 1860 election, it nearly succeeded—some say it did win, but one of the Belleville ballot boxes mysteriously ended up in a bonfire.
Of course, what goes up in gold country usually comes down just as fast. The easy gold dried up. The winter of 1861–62 was brutal—deep snow cut off the town for weeks. Miners left, saloons shut down, and Belleville started to fade. By 1864, it was nearly a ghost town.
But Van Dusen’s road stuck around. Even after Belleville was gone, the road he built continued to serve the area. Ranchers used it for cattle drives, loggers hauled timber down it, and the Forest Service later turned parts into official roads and ranger stations.
Today, the road still exists as Forest Service Road 3N09. Adventurous drivers can still follow the route Jed built by hand, more than 160 years ago. And if you walk through Holcomb Valley, you’ll find a few signs and stones where Belleville once stood—a rough mining town that burned bright and fast, and a road built by a blacksmith whose daughter gave the place its name.