 | |
| Type | Public community college |
|---|---|
| Established | 1947 |
| President | Bruce Moses |
| Students | 2,261 [1] |
| Location | , , United States 33°39′44″N114°39′10″W / 33.66222°N 114.65278°W |
| Campus | Rural, 200 acres (81 ha) main campus |
| Nickname | Pirates |
| Website | www.paloverde.edu |
Palo Verde College, formerly Palo Verde Junior College, is a public community college in Blythe, California.
Palo Verde College is located along the Colorado River in the fertile Palo Verde Valley, 165 miles (266 km) west of Phoenix, 110 miles (180 km) east of Palm Springs, and 100 miles (160 km) north of Yuma. Its service area includes approximately 20,556 people, 12,456 of whom reside in Blythe.
The Palo Verde College District began serving Needles and surrounding area in 1998 when an agreement was reached to transfer responsibility with the San Bernardino CCD which had been providing limited classes to the area since 1968. Beginning in the Fall 1998, Palo Verde College began offering classes in the evening at Needles High School campus. Almost immediately, a search began for a permanent site for the college, which would allow a full array of classes to be offered, both in the daytime as well as the evening. [2]
In 2003, Riverside Community College officials William O'Rafferty, associate vice president of academic affairs; Steven Bailey, dean of public safety; and Robert Curtin, associate dean of public safety, were convicted on felony charges of fraud, embezzlement, grand theft and misappropriation of public funds with regard to public safety classes. The scheme allowed students to take multiple classes at the same time and often gave credit for classes taken at different campuses without attendance. All three Riverside Community College officials were former Riverside County sheriff's deputies. The three dealt exclusively with Al Stremble, Assistant Superintendent of Palo Verde College and a San Bernardino County Reserve Sheriff's Deputy. Palo Verde College was required to repay $713,000 it obtained illegally as part of the scheme. [4] [5] [6]
San Bernardino County, officially the County of San Bernardino and sometimes abbreviated as S.B. County, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is located within the Inland Empire area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 2,181,654, making it the fifth-most populous county in California and the 14th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is San Bernardino.
Ehrenberg, also historically spelled "Ehrenburg", is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in La Paz County, Arizona, United States. The population was 1,470 at the 2010 census. Ehrenberg is named for its founder, Herman Ehrenberg.
Palo Verde is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California. Its name comes from the native desert tree, Palo Verde, which in turn takes its name from the Spanish for stick (palo) and green (verde), sharing its name with the Palo Verde Valley, the valley it is located.
Blythe is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximately 224 miles (360 km) east of Los Angeles and 150 miles (240 km) west of Phoenix. Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe, a San Francisco financier, who established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the region in 1877. The city was incorporated on July 21, 1916. The population was 18,317 at the 2020 census.
Moreno Valley is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and is part of the Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario metropolitan area. It is the second-largest city in Riverside County by population and one of the Inland Empire's population centers. The city's population was 208,634 at the 2020 census. Moreno Valley is also part of the greater Los Angeles area.
Area codes 760 and 442 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the U.S. state of California. These area codes serve an overlay complex that comprises much of the southeastern and southernmost portions of California. It includes Imperial, Inyo, and Mono counties, as well as portions of North County San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Kern counties. Area code 760 was created on March 22, 1997 in a split of area code 619. Area code 442 was added to the same area on November 21, 2009.
Vidal, California is a small unincorporated community located in southeastern California, in San Bernardino County on U.S. Route 95, 38 miles (61 km) north of Blythe, California, United States and 55 miles (89 km) south of Needles. The town is 22 miles (35 km) west of the townsite of Earp, California and 23 miles (37 km) west of Parker, Arizona on State Highway 62. The community, which is two miles (3 km) north of the Riverside County line, lies at an elevation of 812 feet (247 m) above sea level. Vidal is 221 miles (356 km) from the city of San Bernardino, making it the second-farthest town in the county from the county seat behind Earp. Wyatt Earp spent the last winters of his life in Vidal, working claims of gold and copper he found nearby; the aforementioned townsite of Earp is located in and around those claims.
Ripley is a census-designated place community in east Riverside County. It is located along State Route 78 (SR78) between Palo Verde and Blythe. The area is mostly agricultural lands irrigated by Colorado River water. The elevation is 249 feet (76 m). The population was 692 at the 2010 census.
Midland is a ghost town in Riverside County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of California. It is adjacent to the Little Maria Mountains and located about 20 mi (32 km) northwest of Blythe. It is accessible from Blythe in the south via Lovekin Boulevard and Midland Road, and from Rice in the north via Midland Road.
The Riverside County Sheriff's Department (RSD), also known as the Riverside Sheriff's Office (RSO), is a law enforcement agency in Riverside County, in the U.S. state of California. Overseen by an elected sheriff-coroner, the department serves unincorporated areas of Riverside County as well as some of the incorporated cities in the county by contract. 17 of the county's 26 cities, with populations ranging from 4,958 to 193,365, contract with the department for police services. The county hospital and one tribal community also contract with the department for proactive policing. Riverside County is home to 12 federally recognized Indian reservations. Absent proactive policing and traffic enforcement, the department is responsible for enforcing criminal law on all Native American tribal land within the county. This function is mandated by Public Law 280, enacted in 1953, which transferred the responsibility of criminal law enforcement on tribal land from the federal government to specified state governments including California. The department also operates the county's jail system.
The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) of six of the ten counties in Southern California, serving Imperial County, Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and Ventura County. San Diego County's MPO is the San Diego Association of Governments, which is an unrelated agency.
Today's Bradshaw Trail is a historic overland stage route in the western Colorado Desert of Southern California. It is a remnant of the much longer Bradshaw Road, also known as the Road to La Paz, or Gold Road, established in 1862 by William D. Bradshaw. It was the first overland route to connect the gold fields near La Paz in the U.S. New Mexico Territory, later the Arizona Territory, to Southern California's more populated west coast. Once in La Paz, additional roads provided access to the mining districts of the central New Mexico/Arizona Territory, near Wickenburg and Prescott.
The Palo Verde Dam is a diversion dam on the Colorado River in La Paz County, Arizona, and Riverside County, California, in the southwestern United States, approximately 9 miles (14 km) northeast of Blythe. The dam is earthen and rockfill, built solely to divert water into irrigation canals serving the Palo Verde Irrigation District. It measures 1,850 feet (560 m) long at its crest, which is at an elevation of 283.5 feet (86.4 m), and stands 46 feet (14 m) high above the riverbed, containing approximately 175,000 cubic yards (134,000 m3) of material. Construction of the dam, which began in 1956 and ended in 1958, was authorized by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The dam was constructed to raise the water level of the river because the upstream Hoover and Davis Dams blocked sediment, causing significant degradation of the riverbed that hampered water diversion.
W. R. Byron Airport is a privately owned, private use airport in Riverside County, California, United States. It is located four nautical miles northwest of the central business district of Blythe, California, within the city limits.
Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the United States. The name was derived from the city of Riverside, which is the county seat.
The Palo Verde Valley is located in the Lower Colorado River Valley, next to the eastern border of Southern California with Arizona, United States. It is located on the Colorado Desert within the Sonoran Desert south of the Parker Valley. Most of the valley is in Riverside County, with the southern remainder in Imperial County. La Paz County borders to the east on the Colorado River.
The Blythe Intake is the place of the first irrigation canal to feed water to the Palo Verde Valley in 1877. It is located just north of Blythe, California in Riverside County, California. The Blythe Intake was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.948) on March 1, 1982. The site of the Blythe Intake is currently at the Palo Verde Dam.
Thomas Henry Blythe, was a Welsh-born American businessman; he became a successful self-made capitalist and tycoon after emigrating to San Francisco in the United States. Blythe is most remembered for purchasing, developing, and subdividing the Palo Verde Valley in southern California, and obtaining primary rights to Colorado River water to irrigate the valley. The city of Blythe, California, the largest city in the Palo Verde Valley, is named for him.
