Ontario Basic Data

City of Ontario
—  City  —
Seal
Nickname(s): The Gateway to Southern California
Location within San Bernardino County in the state of California
Coordinates: 34°03′10″N 117°37′40″W / 34.05278°N 117.62778°W / 34.05278; -117.62778 Coordinates: 34°03′10″N 117°37′40″W / 34.05278°N 117.62778°W / 34.05278; -117.62778
Country	United States
State	California
County	San Bernardino
Government
- Type	Council-Manager
- City Council	Mayor Paul S. Leon Jim Bowman Alan D. Wapner Sheila Mautz Debra Dorst-Porada
- City Treasurer	James R. Milhiser
- City Clerk	Mary E. Wirtes, MMC
- City Manager	Chris Hughes
Area
- Total	49.9 sq mi (129.1 km)
- Land	49.8 sq mi (128.9 km)
- Water	0.1 sq mi (0.2 km)
Elevation	925 ft (282 m)
Population (2000)
- Total	170,373
- Density	3,173.9/sq mi (1,225.5/km)
Time zone	PST (UTC-8)
- Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC-7)
ZIP codes	91758, 91761-91762, 91764
Area code(s)	909
FIPS code	06-53896
GNIS feature ID	1652764
Website	www.ci.ontario.ca.us

Photos of Ontario and surrounding area

Ontario History

The area that is now Ontario was part of the lands used for hunting and foraging by the semi-nomadic Tongva Serrano (Gabrieleño) Indians, who were known to roam as far south as the western San Bernardino Mountains. At the time of Mexican and later of American settlement, active Native American settlements were scattered across the entire valley. Remains of a Serrano village were discovered in the neighboring foothills of the present-day city of Claremont.

Juan Bautista de Anza friend of the land owner of Rancho Cucamonga [located at Township 1 South Range 7 West], Tiburcio Tapia, leaving him the assistance of the Cahuilla Indians from Anza, whom were under no control of any Spanish establishments. Other than the street and middle school named after De Anza, the only other artifact representing this expedition of De Anza and the Cahullia Tribe is a structure (still standing at 1007 East Main Street in the city's current Quiet Home Acquisition Project Area) and is not currently recognized for its significance. Following the 1819 establishment of San Bernardino Asistencia, which may have served as an outpost of the San Gabriel mission, it became part of a large, vaguely identified area called "San Antonio".

In 1826, Jedediah Smith passed through what is now Upland on the first overland journey to the West coast of North America via the National Old Trails Highway (present-day Foothill Blvd).

Looking north on Euclid Ave., Ontario, 1885

The 1834 secularization of California land holdings resulted in the land's transferral to private hands. In 1881, the Chaffey brothers purchased the land (which at that time also included the present-day city of Upland) and the water rights to it. They engineered a drainage system channeling water from the foothills of Mount Baldy down to the flatter lands below that performed the dual functions of allowing farmers to water their crops and preventing the floods that periodically afflict them. They also created the main thoroughfare of Euclid Avenue (California Highway 83), with its distinctive wide lanes and grassy median. The new "Model Colony" (called so because it offered the perfect balance between agriculture and the urban comforts of schools, churches, and commerce) was originally conceived as a dry town, early deeds containing clauses forbidding the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages within the town. The two named the town "Ontario" because they originally hailed from Ontario, Canada.

Ontario attracted farmers (primarily citrus) and ailing Easterners seeking a drier climate. To impress visitors and potential settlers with the "abundance" of water in Ontario, a fountain was placed at the Southern Pacific railway station. It was turned on when passenger trains were approaching and frugally turned off again after their departure. The original "Chaffey fountain," a simple spigot surrounded by a ring of white stones, was later replaced by the more ornate "Frankish Fountain," an Art Nouveau creation now located outside the Ontario Museum of History and Art.

Agriculture was vital to the early economy, and many street names recall this legacy. The Sunkist plant also remains as a living vestige of the citrus era. The Chaffey brothers left to found the settlements of Mildura, Australia and Renmark, Australia which met with varying success. Charles Frankish continued their work at Ontario.

Mining engineer John Tays refined the design of the novel "mule car," used from 1887 for public transportation on Euclid Avenue to 24th Street. At that point, the two mules were loaded onto a platform at the rear of the car and allowed to ride, as gravity propelled the trolley back down the avenue to the downtown Ontario terminus. Soon replaced by an electric streetcar, the mule car is commemorated by a replica in an enclosure south of C Street on the Euclid Avenue median.

Ontario was incorporated as a city in 1891, and North Ontario broke away in 1906, calling itself Upland. Ontario grew at an astronomical rate, increasing 10 times in the next half a century. The population of 20,000 in the 1960s again grew 10 times more by the year 2007. Ontario was viewed as an "Iowa under Palm trees," with a solid Midwestern/Mid-American foundation, but it had a large German and Swiss community. Tens of thousands of European immigrants came to work in agriculture, and in the early 1900s the first Filipinos and Japanese farm laborers arrived, later to display nursery ownership skills.

Ontario has over two centuries of Hispanic residents from the Californio period of Spanish colonial and Mexican rule in the 1840s, but the first wave of Mexican settlers was in the 1880s brought as workers in the railroad industry (see traquero) and another wave from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. The first youth gangs formed in Ontario in the 1940s from the vestiges of the farmworking Mexican American community that came to work in Ontario's citrus and olive groves. By the 1950s, the gang Onterio Varrio Sur (the South Side or Mission Boulevard) had established themselves in defense of the social oppression faced from the town's political scandals, and by the 1980s, some of its members rose to prominent positions in the Mexican Mafia. Mexican Americans resided in the city's poorer southern side facing State Route 60 and Chino.

City Information

Never Married	(32.0%)
Married	(52.6%)
Separated (Married)	(3.4%)
Widowed	(4.1%)
Divorced	(8.0%)
Races
Hispanic	(59.9%)
Other race	(34.1%)
White Non-Hispanic	(26.6%)
Black	(7.5%)
Two or more races	(5.3%)
Ancestries
German	(5.9%)
Irish	(4.3%)
English	(3.9%)
United States	(2.8%)
Italian	(2.4%)
Schooling
High School	(62.5%)
Bachelors	(10.5%)
Graduates	(2.7%)