This is a list of geographic place names, or toponyms, in Riverside County, California. The county itself was named for the city of Riverside, the county seat, which in turn was named for its location beside the Santa Ana River.
Municipalities NameCoordinatesOriginComments Banning The town was initially named Moore City, for and by Ransom B. Moore. As an early pioneer of El Monte, California, Moore had served as a Los Angeles County Supervisor in 1860. Moore established a cattle ranch in the San Gorgonio Pass in 1865, and shortly after the Southern Pacific Railroad was run through the pass in 1876, Moore laid out plans for an eponymously named town along the tracks. Within only a few months the name of the town was changed to Banning in honor of Phineas Banning, who had operated a stagecoach through the area, pastured sheep in the pass, but who is best known for being the ″Father of the Port of Los Angeles″.Gunther, p. 332 The circumstances on how the town was renamed are uncertain. Welwood Murray, a friend of Banning, is often credited for renaming the town, however, there are correspondence from one of Moore's daughters that indicate Moore himself had chosen to rename the town in honor of Banning.After selling his ranch in the San Gorgonio Pass in 1883, Moore started a new ranch in the Arizona Territory, where he became a Territorial Legislator. Beaumont When the first stagecoach lines began service through the San Gorgonio Pass in 1862, much of the land around Beaumont had been purchased by William F. Edgar, who had participated in an earlier survey of the Pass. A stagecoach station named for him, Edgar Station, was established. When the Southern Pacific Railroad established a station and telegraph office at the Beaumont location in 1875, they named it Summit, or Summit Station. This was in recognition of the fact that Beaumont is at the summit of the San Gorgonio Pass.Gudde, p. 26. In 1884 George C. Egan of Banning purchased the railroad's odd numbered sections of land in the Beaumont area. He laid out a townsite that he named San Gorgonio. In 1887 the Southern California Investment Company, managed by Henry C. Sigler, purchased the town from Egan. Sigler renamed the town Beaumont, French for ″beautiful mountain″. The name was likely chosen for the town's view of the Mount San Jacinto. Local lore has perpetuated the idea that Sigler named Beaumont after his hometown of Beaumont, Texas. Historian Steve Lech has suggested this cannot be accurate, as Sigler was born in Licking County, Ohio. Sigler then pursued a banking career in Osceola, Iowa, before he relocated to Los Angeles, California in the mid-1880s. Beaumont, Texas was not Sigler's hometown, and it does not appear he ever lived there. Blythe Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe (1822–1883), a San Francisco businessman and entrepreneur, who established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the southwestern California region in 1877. Originally named Blythe City, by Thomas Blythe himself, the name was shortened to simply Blythe around the time the first post office was opened in 1908.Gunther, p. 60 Calimesa Initially referred to as South Yucaipa, or South Bench, the South Mesa Social Club held a contest in 1927 to rename the town. Area residents, in Riverside County, wanted to distinguish themselves from their northern neighbor Yucaipa, in San Bernardino County. H. E. Church, a Redlands dentist, was awarded the $15 prize for the winning entry of Calimesa. He donated the prize to the newly formed Calimesa Chamber of Commerce. Gunther states that the name was actually coined by Martha Church, the dentist's wife. Cali, thought to mean ″hot″, was taken from the first part of California and combined with mesa, meaning tableland.Gunther, p. 94 Canyon Lake The town is named after the reservoir it is built around. Initially the reservoir was known as Railroad Canyon Reservoir, or Railroad Canyon Lake, but now the reservoir and the community are referred to by the shortened form, Canyon Lake. See Railroad Canyon on list of topographic place names. Cathedral City Cathedral City′s name is derived from Cathedral Canyon located to the south of the city in the foothills of the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. The canyon is said to have been named for rock formations in the canyon that looked reminiscent of a cathedral. At times the city has also been referred to using the ″unappreciated″ name Cat City.Gunther, p. 106. See Cathedral Canyon on list of topographic place names. Coachella Corona Corona is Spanish for crown or wreath. Originally called South Riverside, citizens wanted to distinguish their city from the larger city of Riverside to the north. When it came time to incorporate the city a number of different names were considered, but the name Corona was chosen to play upon a unique feature of the city, the one–mile diameter drive that circled the center of the town. The circular road also contributed to another informal name for the city, Circle City.Gunther, pp. 134–35. Desert Hot Springs Named for the many natural hot springs in and around the city.Howells, John (2015). Where to Retire: America′s Best & Most Affordable Places. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 70. .Editors of Time Out (2011). Time Out Los Angeles. Time Out Guides. p. 293. . Eastvale Hemet The city of Hemet received its name from the Lake Hemet Land Company. The company was formed in January, 1887, with the intent to ″buy, improve, hold, and sell land in San Diego County, California″. Between 1887 and 1893 the company advertised extensively offering land in South San Jacinto, which was still part of San Diego County until May, 1893. When the company filed a map for the South San Jacinto area in November, 1893, they named the new town Hemet.Gunther, p. 231. The town was incorporated January 20, 1910. The Lake Hemet Land Company was formed at the same time as the Lake Hemet Water Company. Both companies were established by the same investors. The two companies took their name from Hemet Valley, the location where the water company would build the dam to form the Lake Hemet reservoir.See Hemet on list of topographic place names. Indian Wells Indian Wells was given its name because the local Desert Cahuilla Indians had established water wells in the area.Gudde, p. 160 The wells themselves were named Pal Kavinic, meaning water hole in the Cahuilla language, and Palma Seca, meaning dry palm in Spanish. The city was incorporated July 14, 1967.Gunther, p. 249 Indio Indio is Spanish for the word indian. Originally the site of the Indian Wells railroad station, the station was renamed the Indio railroad station in 1877 by the Southern Pacific Company, because another station on the same rail line was also named the Indian Wells station. In 1888 a plat map for Indio was filed for the town that had developed around the Indio railway station, and the city of Indio was incorporated on May 16, 1930.Gunther, p. 251 See also Indian Wells. Jurupa Valley The Jurupa Valley toponym arose in the 19th century. It referred to an indefinite portion of the old Rancho Jurupa on the northwest side of the Santa Ana River opposite the city of Riverside. The USGS Geographic Names Information System contains no topographic feature named ″Jurupa Valley″, and until the city of Jurupa Valley was incorporated on July 1, 2011, no town or post office with that name had been established, although a subdivision of farm lots was filed with the county in 1923 called Jurupa Valley Farms. None-the-less, the term is known to have been used as early as 1887 when Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo spoke at the California Fruit Growers annual convention in Riverside and described his first visit to the ″Jurupa Valley″ area in 1823, at the age of 20, while accompanying Father Gerónimo Boscana on a trip to San Jacinto. When the city first voted to incorporate in 1992, the measure failed, but the name Jurupa was chosen, if the cityhood measure had been approved. Other names considered were Rancho Jurupa, West Riverside, and Camino Real. When cityhood was again considered in 2011, and this time approved by the voters, options for the new city's name were not on the ballot. Instead ″Jurupa Valley″ was the name predetermined by the writer's of the measure. The word Jurupa was derived from the name of a Native American village. See Jurupa on list of topographic place names. Lake Elsinore Menifee Moreno Valley Murrieta Norco Just north of the city of Corona, Norco is an abbreviation of North Corona. Rex B. Clark, the key figure in Norco's founding, is credited for coining the term. See also Corona. Palm Desert Palm Desert was the name of the original subdivision south of highway 111, and Palm Village was the name of the subdivision north of the highway. In November, 1950, the two subdivisions were merged into one town named Palm Desert. The town was incorporated November 26, 1973. Palm Springs The precise origin of the name Palm Springs is uncertain. The use of the word ″Springs″ is a reference to the natural hot spring in the cities downtown area, but the origin of the word palm is disputed. One possible source of palm comes from early Spanish explorers who referred to the Palm Springs area as La Palma de la Mano de Dios or The Palm of God′s hand. However, according to William Bright, when the word ″palm″ appears in Californian place names, it usually refers to the native California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, which is abundant in the Palm Springs area. The earliest use of the name ″Palm Springs″ is from United States Topographical Engineers who used the term in 1853 maps. See also Sec-he and Agua Caliente on list of topographic place names. Perris Rancho Mirage Riverside In September, 1870, the Southern California Colony Association of Jurupa was formed, and they purchased the land and water rights necessary to establish a settlement on the east side of the Santa Ana River. Initially they referred to the new town as Jurupa, the name of the 1838 Mexican land grant their land had been partitioned from. To emphasize the fact that the new town was located near a water source, in a somewhat arid region, the founders voted to officially name the new town Riverside on December 18, 1870.Lewis, p. 462.Gunther, pp. 427–29, 506–07. See also Jurupa. San Jacinto Temecula Wildomar
Topographic place names