40 Fun Facts About Inland Empire

In which Inland Empire city did Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald's in 1940?

San Bernardino is where the brothers started with a barbecue stand before rebuilding the business around hamburgers in 1948. Ray Kroc first visited because they had bought eight of his milkshake mixers.

The Coachella music festival is held at the Empire Polo Club in which Inland Empire desert city?

Indio calls itself the City of Festivals, and the same polo grounds host the Stagecoach country music festival the weekend after Coachella ends.

Which fruit did Eliza Tibbets plant in the Inland Empire in the 1870s, starting a citrus boom?

Navel orange trees from Brazil reached her through a friend at the US Department of Agriculture, and one of her original trees was later preserved as a landmark.

Which historic highway follows Foothill Boulevard through the Inland Empire, past a tepee motel?

Route 66 ran from Chicago to Santa Monica, and the Wigwam Motel beside it is one of seven tepee villages built across the country between 1933 and 1949.

Which British band launched its first American tour at the Inland Empire's Swing Auditorium in 1964?

The Rolling Stones played their first US tour date there; a light plane crashed into the auditorium in 1981 and the building had to be demolished.

Which Inland Empire desert resort city had singer Sonny Bono as its mayor from 1988 to 1992?

Palm Springs elected Bono after he grew frustrated with city bureaucracy while trying to open a restaurant there. He later won a seat in Congress.

Which hot, dry winds funnel through the Cajon Pass into the Inland Empire and fan autumn wildfires?

Santa Ana winds begin inland and warm as they sink toward the coast, which is why they often bring the hottest weather of the year in autumn.

In the TV drama The O.C., troubled teenager Ryan Atwood comes from which Inland Empire city?

Chino is where Ryan lives before the wealthy Cohen family takes him in. The real city was long a dairy-farming center and holds a state men's prison opened in 1941.

Which city, home of the Mission Inn, is the most populous in the Inland Empire?

Riverside has more than 300,000 residents, and Richard and Pat Nixon were married at its Mission Inn, the largest Mission Revival building in the United States.

Which national park, named for a spiky desert yucca, straddles both counties of the Inland Empire?

Joshua Tree spans two deserts, a higher one where its namesake plant grows and a lower, hotter one. U2 named a 1987 album after the plant.

Which Inland Empire city, laid out by the Chaffey brothers in 1882, has the region's main airport?

Ontario was named by the brothers for their home province in Canada. They left four years later to found irrigation colonies in Australia.

The Hells Angels motorcycle club was founded in 1948 in which Inland Empire steel town?

Fontana was rural until Henry J. Kaiser built a steel mill there during World War II; the Hells Angels formed in 1948 when several small motorcycle clubs agreed to merge.

Which Inland Empire city's name became a running train-announcement gag on Jack Benny's radio show?

Rancho Cucamonga was plain Cucamonga when Mel Blanc voiced the station announcer, and the gag grew so famous that a statue of Benny went up there.

Which Inland Empire city is the hub of a wine country and hosts a yearly Balloon and Wine Festival?

Temecula sits in a valley that won its own federal wine-region designation in 1984, thanks to cool ocean air that slips through gaps in the coastal mountains.

Which Inland Empire city, a Seventh-day Adventist hub, is one of the world's five Blue Zones?

Loma Linda's long lives are credited to its Adventists, nearly half the population, many of whom are vegetarian and keep a Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.

Which Inland Empire city is nicknamed the Circle City after a boulevard once used for auto races?

Corona was renamed in 1896 for Grand Boulevard, a perfect circle nearly three miles around, where international road races ran in 1913, 1914 and 1916.

Which Inland Empire mountain town is home to the Snow Summit ski area and a solar observatory?

Big Bear Lake became a winter resort when Snow Summit opened in 1952, and snow machines keep its slopes open in dry winters. Caltech began the observatory in 1968.

Which fault created the Cajon Pass and crosses Interstate 15 on its way through the Inland Empire?

The San Andreas Fault marks where the Pacific and North American plates slide past each other, and it runs along the base of the mountains on either side of the pass.

Which computer pioneer paid for the US Festival rock concerts held in the Inland Empire in 1982?

Steve Wozniak, designer of two pioneering home computers, built an open-air venue for the shows at Glen Helen Regional Park and lost an estimated $12 million on each festival.

Which director named his 2006 film Inland Empire, starring Laura Dern, after the California region?

David Lynch wrote, shot, edited and scored the film himself, then promoted Dern for an Oscar by sitting on Hollywood Boulevard beside a live cow.

Which Inland Empire city is home to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine and the mapping software firm Esri?

Redlands got the shrine in 1932 from philanthropist Robert Watchorn, who built it in memory of his son, a pilot in the First World War.

Which Inland Empire city brands itself Horsetown USA and has horse trails instead of most sidewalks?

Norco riders can trot into town and tie up at hitching rails outside the shops, and since 2017 the city has housed the horses that pull Disneyland's streetcars.

Which Inland Empire city was named after the Danish town where Shakespeare set Hamlet?

Lake Elsinore stands on the shore of Southern California's largest natural freshwater lake, which was originally known as Laguna Grande.

Which Inland Empire city, incorporated only in 1984, sits beside March Air Reserve Base?

Moreno Valley had fewer than 50,000 residents when it became a city and more than 200,000 by 2020. The airfield next door opened in 1918 to train military pilots.

Which desert city in the Inland Empire metro area marks the western end of Interstate 40?

Barstow was named for William Barstow Strong, a president of the Santa Fe Railway, and its 1911 Harvey House depot is a stop for Amtrak trains.

Which salty lake on the Inland Empire's edge formed when the Colorado River flooded in 1905?

The Salton Sea filled a dry basin after floodwater broke through an irrigation canal, and the river kept pouring in for two years before the breach was repaired.

Which guitar maker has built its American instruments in the Inland Empire since 1985 and runs its Custom Shop there?

Fender opened a small new factory in the region in 1985, months after CBS sold the company without its old Fullerton plant, and launched the Custom Shop there in 1987.

Which energy drink company, called Hansen Natural until 2012, moved to the Inland Empire in 1998?

Monster began in 1935 as a family firm selling juice to film studios, and it took its drink's name once energy drinks had become its biggest earner.

Which Inland Empire supermarket chain grew from a single Yucaipa market bought in 1936?

Stater Bros. takes its name from twins Cleo and Leo Stater, who bought the market from the man Cleo worked for.

Which desert covers the Inland Empire's High Desert cities of Victorville, Hesperia and Adelanto?

The Mojave Desert stretches across the largest county in the contiguous United States, one bigger than New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

Virgil Earp, older brother of Wyatt, was the first marshal of which Inland Empire railroad town?

Colton is where two rival railroads fought over a track crossing that grew into one of the busiest in the United States.

Which Inland Empire city has staged the Ramona Pageant, California's official outdoor play, since 1923?

Hemet performs the drama, loosely based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel, in a natural amphitheater in the foothills, with generations of local families taking part.

Which Inland Empire desert city hosts the March tennis tournament nicknamed the fifth Grand Slam?

Indian Wells draws the biggest crowds in tennis outside the four majors, and its 16,100-seat main court is the second-largest tennis stadium in the world.

Which High Desert town in the Inland Empire was home to cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans?

Apple Valley nicknamed its main road Happy Trails Highway after the couple's theme song, and both stars are buried in the town.

Which Inland Empire desert city shares its name with a Marine Corps base founded next door in 1952?

Twentynine Palms takes its name from the palms at a desert oasis, the area's original source of water; in Serrano legend, 29 were planted there in a single year.

Which Inland Empire city came into being in July 2011 after voters approved its incorporation?

Jurupa Valley almost had to dissolve within three years, after the state shifted away the vehicle licence fees that new cities relied on.

Which Inland Empire city has the westernmost of the twelve Madonna of the Trail pioneer statues?

Upland's statue went up in 1929 on Euclid Avenue, a broad street that the colony's planner named after his favourite mathematician.

Which Inland Empire peak, nicknamed Old Greyback, is the highest point in Southern California?

Mount San Gorgonio rises 11,503 feet, yet from a distance it looks like a huge rounded hill rather than a crag, which is how it earned the nickname.

Which Native American people of the Inland Empire include the Agua Caliente and Morongo bands?

The Cahuilla lived far enough inland to have little contact with Spanish missionaries, and the Agua Caliente band has since become a major landowner and casino operator.

Which Inland Empire silver-mining ghost town was restored by the founder of Knott's Berry Farm?

Calico had more than 500 mines at its 1880s peak, and Walter Knott's uncle had bankrolled the prospectors who struck its richest silver vein.