It depends on what stories you read. Along the road, there use to be a lot of round tunnels that we called "chinese mines", there were stories about gold mining in Lytle creek and even an old tale of emeralds being found in the area. The emeralds were mentioned in passing in an article about a supposed diamond field in San Bernardino that that said something like "well, if there are emeralds in Lytle Creek, then why not diamonds in San Bernardino?"
If you were to go detecting in Lytle Creek now, it would most likely be a nightmare. All along the road about a 1/2 mile out of town and out, was a popular shooting area up until sometime in the 90's. On weekends the place sounded like a war zone and we called it "lie-low" creek. Expect to find a ton of shell casings, cans and any other assorted metal things that people brought out to shoot full of holes. Also, the hillsides will be full of lead.
