The high country of the San Bernardinos remained largely unexplored until 1845, when Benjamin D. Wilson led a party of 22 men from a rancho near present-day Riverside to catch several Mohave cattle rustlers who had fled into the mountains. Wilson was the first recorded European to see the Big Bear Valley, and named Bear Lake (today's Baldwin Lake) for the abundance of California grizzly in the area. The party captured and skinned more than twenty bears. Later, they found and arrested the rustlers, who were hiding along the Mojave River. Wilson's expedition opened the interior of the San Bernardinos to later exploration, and discouraged Native Americans such as the Mohave from staging similar raids over the mountains.