The Inland Empire is a large metropolitan area located in Southeastern California encompasing two of the 15 most populous counties in the United States, Riverside and San Bernardino. With over 4 million people, it is the second largest metropolitan area in Southern California, third in California, 14th largest in the United States and 25th in the Americas.
The Inland Empire is centered around the region's three oldest cities: San Bernardino, founded in 1854, Riverside, founded in 1883, and Ontario, founded in 1891. At the end of the 19th century these cities were major centers of agriculture including citrus, dairy, and wine-making. The importance of agriculture declined through the 20th century, and since the 1970s a rapidly growing population, fed by families migrating from Los Angeles County and Orange County in search of affordable housing, has led to more residential, commercial, and industrial development.
The term "Inland Empire" is documented to have been used as early as April, 1914, by the Riverside Enterprise (now The Press-Enterprise) newspaper. Developer's in the area likely introduced the term to promote the region and to distinguish the area's unique features from the coastal communities around Los Angeles area. The "Inland" part of the name is derived from the region's location about 37 miles (60 km) inland from the Pacific Ocean (from Huntington Beach) and east of downtown Los Angeles.
The most accepted physical boundaries between Los Angeles and the Inland Empire from west to east are the San Jose Hills splitting the San Gabriel Valley from the Pomona Valley, leading to the urban populations centered in the Greater San Bernardino area. From the south to north, the Santa Ana Mountains physically divide Orange from San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The Santa Rosa Mountains, as well as the Southern California portion of the Sonoran Desert, physically divide Riverside from San Diego county. Interconnectivity provided by one of the most comprehensive freeway systems in the United States has eroded any sense of physical boundaries between the Inland Empire and the Greater Los Angeles area. This continued erosion of physical boundaries has lead to the frequent inclusion of Imperial County into the region starting in the early 2000's.
History
Prior to the mid-19th century, the area was sparsely populated by Native Americans; the Spanish and Mexicans who once controlled the area considered it largely unsuitable for colonization. The first group of White American settlers arrived over the Cajon Pass in 1851, in the form of Mormon pioneers who were the first settlers of San Bernardino. Although the Mormons left a scant six years later, recalled to Salt Lake by Brigham Young during the church's standoff with the US government, more settlers soon followed.
The entire landmass of Southern California was subdivided according to the San Bernardino Meridian, which was first plotted as part of the Public Land Survey System in November 1852, by Col. Henry Washington. Base Line road, a major thoroughfare, today runs from Highland to San Dimas, intermittently along the absolute baseline coordinates plotted by Col. Washington.
San Bernardino County was first formed out of parts of Los Angeles County on April 26 , 1853 . While the partition once included what is today most of Riverside County, the region is not as monolithic as it may sound. Rivalries between Colton, Redlands, Riverside and San Bernardino over the location of the county seat in the 1890s caused each of them to form their own civic communities, each with their own newspapers. On August 14 , 1893 the Senate allowed Riverside County to form out of land previously in San Bernardino and San Diego counties, after rejecting a bill for Pomona to split from LA County and become the seat of what would have been called San Antonio County.
The arrival of railroads and the importation of navel and Valencia orange trees in the 1870s touched off explosive growth, with the area quickly becoming a major center for citrus production. This agricultural boom continued with the arrival of water from the Colorado River and the rapid growth of Los Angeles in the early 20th century, with dairy farming becoming another staple industry. In 1926, Route 66 (now known as Foothill Boulevard) came through the northern parts of the area, bringing a stream of tourists and migrants to the region. Still, the region endured as the key part of the Southern California "Citrus belt" until the end of World War II, when a new generation of real-estate developers bulldozed acres of agricultural land to build suburbs. The precursor to the San Bernardino Freeway, the Ramona Expressway, was built in 1944, and further development of the freeway system facilitated the expansion of suburbs and human migration throughout the Inland Empire and Southern California.
The region experienced significant economic and population growth through most of the later half of the twentieth century. In the early 1990s, the loss of the region's military bases and reduction of nearby defense industries due to the end of the Cold War lead to a local economic downturn. The region as a whole had partially recovered from this downturn by the turn of the century through the development of warehousing, shipping, logistics and retail industries, primarily centered around Ontario. However, these industries have been heavily affected by the global late-2000s recession.
Geography
Unlike most metropolitan areas that have grown up around a central city, the Inland Empire centers around two large sized cities Riverside and San Bernardino, with the help of many other small cities and unincorporated communities that together form the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the nation. Although exact boundaries are nebulous, Los Angeles County and Orange County border the Inland Empire to the West; Inyo and Kern to the North, San Diego and Imperial County to the South and the States of Arizona and Nevada to the East. The term "Inland Empire" originally referred to the acres of citrus groves that once extended from Pasadena to Redlands during the early half of the 20th century. The Inland Empire today is considered to stretch from the Los Angeles County - San Bernardino County border through the San Bernardino Valley, encompassing the San Bernardino Mountains and the high and low deserts to the Nevada and Arizona state lines. Suburban sprawl, centering around the cities of Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ontario, spreads out to form a unified whole with the Greater Los Angeles area, with further development encroaching past the mountains into the outlying desert areas. The San Bernardino valley floor houses roughly over 80% of the total human population in the IE.
Elevations range from 11,499 feet (3,505 m) at the top of the San Gorgonio Mountain to 220 ft (-67.1 m) below sea level at the Salton Sea. The San Bernardino mountains are home to the San Bernardino National Forest and the resort communities of Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead, and Running Springs. The Santa Ana River extends from Mt. San Gorgonio for nearly 100 miles (160 km) through San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties before it eventually spills into the Pacific Ocean at Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. While temperatures are generally cool to cold in the mountains, it can get hot in the valleys. In the desert resort of Palm Springs, near Joshua Tree National Park, summer temperatures can reach well over 110 degrees.
The developed area of the IE consists of the following valleys: Chino Valley, Coachella Valley, Cucamonga Valley, Menifee Valley, Murrieta Valley, Perris Valley, San Bernardino Valley (Largest valley in the Inland Empire), Temecula Valley, and Victor Valley. The Inland Empire is popular for recreational activities such as skiing the San Bernardinos. In Southwestern Riverside County, Lake Elsinore is popular among boating enthusiasts.
Some Southern Californians call the region " the 909 " (after its primary telephone area code, 909). In 2004, because of growing demand for telephone numbers, most of Riverside County was granted a new area code, 951.
Economics
Inexpensive land prices (compared to Los Angeles and Orange Counties), a large supply of vacant land, and a transport network where many highways and railroads intersect have made the Inland Empire a major shipping hub. Some of the nation's largest manufacturing companies have chosen the Inland Empire for their distribution facilities including Toyota Motor Corporation's North American Parts and Logistics Distribution (NAPLD) center in Ontario and APL Logistics in Rancho Cucamonga. Whirlpool Corporation recently leased a 1,700,000-square-foot (158,000 m 2 ) distribution center in Perris that is larger than 31 football fields and one of the biggest warehouses in the country. These centers operate as p
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