The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated IE) is a metropolitan area and region located inland from coastal Southern California. Centering on the cities of Riverside and San Bernardino and encompassing their respective counties, it lies to the east of Los Angeles County and Orange County. The region, in its narrowest definition, includes the cities of northwestern Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County that are part of the urbanized area of Greater Los Angeles. It is sometimes considered to include the desert communities of the Coachella and Victor valleys opposite the San Gorgonio Pass and San Bernardino Mountains from the Santa Ana River watershed, which creates the majority of the Inland Empire. The region's most comprehensive definition includes all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, stretching east to the borders of Nevada and Arizona and covering a larger area than West Virginia. This is the definition primarily used by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the two federal agencies that exclusively delineate U.S. metropolitan areas at the county level.
The U.S. Census Bureau–defined Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario metropolitan area, which comprises both Riverside County and San Bernardino County, covers more than and had a population of about 4.6 million in 2020. At the end of the 19th century, the Inland Empire was a major center of agriculture, including citrus, dairy and winemaking. Agriculture declined through the 20th century and a rapidly increasing population, helped by families migrating in search of affordable housing, has led to more residential, industrial and commercial development since the 1970s.
Etymology The term Inland Empire is documented to have been used by the Riverside Enterprise newspaper (now The Press-Enterprise) as early as April 1914. Developers in the area likely introduced the term to promote the region and to highlight the area's unique features. The "Inland" part of the name is derived from the region's location, generally about inland from Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. Originally, this area was called the Orange Empire due to the acres of citrus groves which extended from Pasadena to Redlands during the first half of the 20th century. The boundaries of the Inland Empire are nebulous, but the region is generally defined as the cities of western Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County, adjacent to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. A broader definition includes Palm Springs and the surrounding desert communities, and a much more widespread definition includes all of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
History
What is now known as the Inland Empire was inhabited for thousands of years, prior to the late 18th century, by the Tongva, Taaqtam, Ivilyuqaletem and Payómkawichum Native Americans. The first American settlers, a group of Mormon pioneers, arrived over the Cajon Pass in 1851. They brought roughly 26 slaves with them, one of whom was Biddy Mason, despite California having been labeled a "free state". The Mormons also bought and indentured the local natives. This was allowed under the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians in 1850. 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 U.S. 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.. The baseline and meridian intersect at 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 state 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 the mid 19th century, the success of the citrus and railroad industry attracted Asian immigrants to the region, where they often accepted lower wages. In 1867, the first known Chinatown in the region was in San Bernardino. However, anti-Asian sentiment that continued with the Chinese Exclusion Act resulted in their resettlement outside of city limits along Third Street between Arrowhead Avenue and Sierra Way. At its peak, the community had a population of 400-600. They owned restaurants, groceries, and a Buddhist temple that displayed a statue of Guanyin which attracted other Asian visitors across Southern California. The region's largest Chinatown was on Ninth Street in Riverside, which populated about 400, but as high as 3,000 during peak harvest season. It was locally known as "Little Gom-Benn" since most residents originated from the Gom-Benn village in Taishan, Guangdong. The Panic of 1893 led to hundreds of white laborers in Redlands to riot against Asian communities. Asian laborers, who often worked for less, often kept their jobs during the panic, which angered unemployed white workers. Mobs and armed white gangs burned and looted businesses while threatening the lives of Asian locals if they did not leave town. The National Guard was deployed in the region to quell the unrest. The first American Koreatown known as Pachappa Camp was founded nearly a decade later in Riverside by Ahn Chang Ho in 1904. Continued nativist sentiment as well as reoccurring fires led to the decline of these communities over the next half century resulting in the land being redeveloped. This is with the exception of Riverside's former Chinatown, which is recognized as an archeological site. Artifacts from these communities are found in local museums.
Likewise, the region's wealth attracted entrepreneurs, allowing for further development. A major example is the Chaffey Brothers who were Canadian entrepreneurs who established the hydroelectric-powered irrigation colonies of Etiwanda, Ontario (named after their home province of Ontario), and Upland, as Matthew Gage in Riverside developed the Gage Canal in the 1880s. The brothers also founded Chaffey College in Ontario in 1883 and was originally dedicated to agriculture as part of their "Model Colony" to create a highly efficient and well organized town. The area, formerly known as New Model Colony, is now known as Ontario Ranch. The year 1893 saw the development of the historic Milk Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant near Redlands. It powered irrigation pumps and was the first commercial three phase commercial AC power plant in the US. These developments led to the region being one of the wealthiest in the United States in the late 19th century, notably Riverside in 1895.
President Benjamin Harrison was the first president to visit the region in 1891 as part of his 21 state tour by train. He spoke at the Glenwood Hotel in Riverside (now known as The Mission Inn) starting a tradition of presidential visits to the region.
The region's growing development increasingly displaced the native population. The Spanish mission system in California, notably the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, forced natives to assimilate and convert to catholicism in the 18th century. The late 18th century and early 19th century saw the development of rancho outposts, such as Redlands' Asistencia, that went more inland to increase mission outreach. The California gold rush saw the influx of migration to the region, which increased tensions between the new settlers and the indigenous communities, resulting in skirmishes that resulted in the death of Yuhaaviatam leader Kiika. From their original land that eventually became the National Orange Show, the natives were finally completely removed from their settlements in 1891. Throughout the century, natives were allowed to be forced into labor as part of the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians until it was repealed in 1866 following the ratification of the 13th Amendment. in 1891, California passed the Act of Relief for Mission Indians which grouped the inland tribes and recognized them as "San Manuel Band of Mission Indians" and granted them the San Manuel Reservation. Despite this small victory, assimilation of the indigenous population was still an important goal of the government. The Perris Indian School was the most prevalent boarding school in the area before it was moved to Riverside and was named the Sherman Institute (now a high school) in 1903. Frank Miller, owner of the Mission Inn, campaigned to have the school relocated near the hotel. He believed it would increase tourism while also providing the hotel with cheap labor and even entertainment.
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 in the area 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 led 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. During the 2008 Recession, industry suffered heavily but had begun to recover by 2010.
Geography Physical geography
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 San Bernardino Valley. From the south to north, the Santa Ana Mountains physically divide Orange County from Riverside County. The Santa Rosa Mountains, as well as the Southern California portion of the Sonoran Desert, physically divide Riverside County from San Diego County.