| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
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 arrival of railroads in subsequent decades and the importation of navel and Valencia orange trees touched off explosive growth, with the area 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 came through the northern parts of the area, bringing a stream of tourists and migrants to the region.
As with the other agricultural areas in Southern California, such as the San FernandoThe San Fernando Valley or, simply, The Valley is an urbanized valley in southern California. Geography The San Fernando Valley is bounded by the Santa Susana Mountains to the northwest, The Simi Hills to the west, the Santa Monica Mountains to the south, and San GabrielThe San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of southern California. It lies to the east of the city of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and to the west of the Inland Empire. It derives it valleys and Orange County, urban development eventually came to the Inland Empire. Since the 1980s, the area has become a major bedroom communityA bedroom community is a town or city that is primarily residential in character, with most of its residents commuting to a nearby town or city to earn their livelihood. Unlike a suburb, which is adjacent to the urban area it serves, bedroom communities a for families priced out of home ownership in Orange and Los Angeles counties, with African-Americans fleeing South Central Los AngelesSouth Central Los Angeles ("South Central") is a large geographic and cultural area lying to the south and southwest of downtown Los Angeles, California. While the name South Central derives from the neighborhood's historical core along south Central Aven playing a particularly large role in the area's exurbThe expression Exurbs was coined in the 1950s to describe the ring of prosperous rural communities beyond the suburbs that, due to availability via the new high-speed limited-access highways, were becoming dormitory communities for an urban area. Earlieran development. Residential development has been largely unplanned, with a suburban sprawl pattern predominating.
Cheap land and excellent transportation connections have also made it a major industrial center, with freight distribution (from the ports of Los Angeles and Long BeachLong Beach is a city located in southern Los Angeles County, California, on the Pacific coast. It is one of the busiest sea ports in the world. Its location is 33°47' North, 118°10' West, about 20 miles (30 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. According to to the rest of the country) a particularly important sector. As a result, traffic congestion has become problematic, and air pollution--both locally generated and blown into the region from the Los Angeles Basin and San Gabriel Valley--has reached crisis level. In 2004, the EPA rated the San Bernardino- Riverside area as having the worst particulate air pollution in the United States (although the San Joaquin Valley in central California had the worst overall air pollution).
Some residents (mainly adolescents and children) have begun calling it "the IE" as a response to the popularity of the television program The OC (which centers around a character originally from Chino who relocates to wealthy Newport Beach).