Running Springs Sits on the Rim. Fire Comes From Below.

Straddling Highway 18 at the edge of the San Bernardino Mountain rim, Running Springs faces upslope fire from the valley floor with a single highway corridor for evacuation. The Old Fire showed exactly how that plays out.

Running Springs is an unincorporated mountain community of roughly 4,860 residents stretched along Highway 18 — the Rim of the World Drive — at approximately 6,000 feet elevation in the San Bernardino Mountains. The community occupies a narrow band of development along the highway corridor between Lake Arrowhead to the west and Big Bear Lake to the east, with residential streets branching into dense pine forest on both sides of the road.

The 2003 Old Fire defined Running Springs' relationship with wildfire. When the fire burned upslope from the San Bernardino Valley floor into the Rim of the World communities, Running Springs sat directly in its path. Residents evacuated along Highway 18 — the same road fire was advancing along — under conditions that one fire official described as the most dangerous evacuation scenario in the county. Structures were lost throughout the corridor, and the community experienced days of uncertainty while fire burned in the surrounding forest.