Murrieta, CA

On my way down to Carlsbad, CA Tim and I stopped in Murrieta, CA to have lunch. Murrieta is a city in southwest Riverside County.  It is a communter town with most of its residents communting to San Diego County or Orange County.  The land where Murrieta is located,with its rolling hills, not heavily poputlated, and native trees, was purchased by Esequial Murrieta who was from Spain.  He purchased two Mexican land grants (Rancho Paubo & Rancho Temecula) in the mid 1800s that equalled about 52,000 acres for the intent to raise sheep.  He got called back to Spain after making the purchase and gave the land to his brother, Juan Murrieta, who did bring 100,000 sheep to the valley in 1873.  This land also had some natural hot springs that was thought to be used by Juan Murrieta  to bathe his sheep in.  In 1882 a depot was built and the Southern California Railroad began making "Murrieta" a regular stop.  With train travel, several people also discovered the beauty of this land and began visiting it and using the springs.  Eventually, Hot Springs Resort was built and became the focal point of the area and Murrieta became a tourist town and remained a that way until   the train stopped running in 1935 and the springs dried up.  The land where the resort was built in now home to a Bible College.   Murrieta then just became a small country town and stayed that way until the mid 1980s when Interstate 15 was built through the area the town experieced another boom in population.  Residential housings were being built for communters from San Diego and Orange counties and in 1991 Murietta became a city.  It continued to grow and experienced a 100% population growth between 2000 and 2010 making it the fastest growing city in the state of California.  The population is 103,466 with a median income of $78,800 and a median age of 33.
Murrieta's economy is retail and has several malls, mini malls, towncenters, and strip malls.  The shopping is wonderful with almost any store you can think of available.  We had lunch at City Bagel and Bakery.  It was a small deli like restaurant with good food that was reasonably priced.  Their bagels are made fresh daily and they offer a large variety of bagels and baked goods.  When I visit Murietta again, and I will because this is the place to shop, I will definately stop by and get some bagels from City Bagel and Bakery.  Tonight I am attending another stamping event with my California BFFs and am looking forward to seeing all of them again!