Fontana, California
city in San Bernardino County, California, United States

Fontana is a city in the Inland Empire region of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Founded by Azariel Blanchard Miller in 1913, it remained essentially rural until World War II, when entrepreneur Henry J. Kaiser built a large steel mill in the area. It is now a regional hub of the trucking industry, with the east–west Interstate 10 and State Route 210 crossing the city and Interstate 15 passing diagonally through its northwestern quadrant. The city is about 46 miles (74 km) east of Los Angeles.
The United States Census Bureau reported that Fontana's 2020 population was 208,393, making it the second-most-populous city in San Bernardino County and the 20th largest in the state.
History
Native Americans inhabited the area.
Fontana, formerly Rosena from 1890 to 1919, was founded in 1919 by Azariel Blanchard Miller. The name fontana is Italian for fountain or water source; the city is close to the Santa Ana River to the east. Within a few years, it became an agricultural town of citrus orchards, vineyards and chicken ranches and astride U.S. Route 66 (now known as Foothill Boulevard). The Fontana area was radically transformed during World War II when Henry J. Kaiser built the Kaiser Steel plant just outside the city limits.
“Fontana, California” enters the record as city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fontana, California and city can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Fontana, California” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fontana, California and city provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q491128. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2020, 1890 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fontana, California” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.