Inland Empire (California) - History

History

What is now known as the Inland Empire was inhabited for thousands of years, prior to the late eighteenth century, by the Tongva, Serrano, and Cahuilla Native Americans. With Spanish colonization and the subsequent Mexican era the area was sparsely populated at the land grant Ranchos, considering it unsuitable for missions. The first American settlers arrived over the Cajon Pass in 1851, a group of Mormon pioneers who were the first residents of San Bernardino. Although the Mormons left a scant six years later, recalled to Salt Lake City by Brigham Young during the church's Utah War with the US government, other 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 L.A. County and become the seat of what would have been called San Antonio County.

The arrival of rail 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 and Interstate 215) 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 latter half of the 20th 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 start of the 21st 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.