As our travel schedules allow, this blog will explore the state via photographs in concise yet informative articles designed to stir curiosity, prompt questions and initiate dialog. Looking at the state from the air, as many new arrivals and tourists do, we can see aspects of the landscape that might not be evident at the ground level. Each succeeding “featurette” will showcase three to six photographs and will be accompanied by captions and/or text describing or explaining the geographic significance of each image. These features may be locally oriented, regionally focused, state-wide in scope or encompass issues of national significance. Some may even speak to California’s role on the world stage.
Our first offering features a small section of the Inland Empire at the foot of the Transverse Ranges near the junction of the 15 & 215 freeways. This area has seen tremendous population and economic growth in the past few decades. As you view this short pictorial essay please ask yourself, what opportunities and challenges do you see ahead for this region?
Up until WWII, the Inland Empire held only about a quarter of a million people and was mostly the domain of farms and orchards. Long after the L.A. Basin filled in it’s open spaces, the Inland Empire kept busy charting a similar course of unfettered development. From 1950 to the present, the growth rate has averaged 50%. Today Fontana alone has over 200,000 residents. And now, at the close of the second decade of the 21st Century, even the “IE” is running out of prime real estate on which to build. Here we look down on the city of Rancho Cucamonga as it laps the edges of the San Gabriel Mountains. Some 4.2 million people now call the Inland Empire Metropolitan Statistical Area home. That makes it the 3rd largest metro area in the state, edging past San Diego and not far behind the Bay Area. Development now stretches to the foot of the Transverse Ranges. The only major breaks in this sea of humanity are floodplains and debris basins, as seen here at the mouth of the Cajon Pass. The Heritage Neighborhood of Fontana (seen below) is but one of many planned communities that have sprung up here in what only a short time ago was farmland or open space. Nearly 7,000 people are now housed in 1.69 square miles of mid-sized homes marketed towards families fleeing more expensive real estate further west. But as the open spaces here fill up, median home values have increased. In 2010 the median sale price in Fontana was ~195,000. In 2020 it is forecast to be $400,000. And though wages in the IE are on the rise, they have not kept pace with state averages and pale in comparison to the rate in which home prices have risen.
