Riverside, CA news and local guide

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Cahuilla and Serrano people lived in the area, and Californios such as Bernardo Yorba and Juan Bandini later set up ranches. In the 1860s Louis Prevost started the California Silk Center Association, a short-lived attempt at silk farming. After it failed, John W. North, a temperance-minded abolitionist from New York who had earlier founded Northfield, Minnesota, bought part of its land and formed the Southern California Colony Association. In March 1870 he put up posters announcing the new colony. Riverside was temperance-minded and Republican. It had four saloons at its founding, and the town raised license fees until they left. Investors from England and Canada built the first golf course and polo field in Southern California there.

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The first orange trees were planted in 1871. The citrus industry that made Riverside famous began in 1874, when Eliza Tibbets received three Brazilian navel orange trees from William Saunders, a horticulturist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The trees thrived, and navel oranges spread quickly. By 1882 California had more than half a million citrus trees, almost half of them in Riverside. With refrigerated rail cars and new irrigation systems, Riverside was the richest city in the United States in income per person by 1895. California Citrus State Historic Park and the restored packing houses downtown remember the industry, and the city is also home to the historic Mission Inn. Sources Wikipedia: Riverside, California