Rancho Cucamonga
The Inland Empire's premier City invites you to acquaint yourself with all it has to offer. As part of one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas, Rancho Cucamonga nonetheless remains one of the safest cities in the country and is a desirable place to live, work, and play.
Crowned by the majestic San Gabriel Mountains, the City's planned communities and award-winning architecture reflect on a community proud of its past and excited by its future. With over 20 parks and community facilities, and having highly rated schools, Rancho Cucamonga has much to offer its residents. Businesses too are finding Rancho Cucamonga is a great place to call their home.
The Native American cultures of southern California had stabilized some three thousand years ago, thriving until almost eliminated by European invasion. Eager to expand its empire, Spain set out to explore North America in the eighteenth century. In 1769, Captain Gaspar de Portola led a group of soldiers and Franciscan monks, supervised by Father Junipera Serra, to Baja California in a colonization effort. The Mission System established by Serra supported a loosely-constructed social system of ranchos, primarily cattle producing, ordered by a feudal and kinship way of life.
By 1833, the amount of control held by Spain diminished and as Mexico won its independence from the Crown, all land in southern and Baja California was opened up for granting from the new governor of Mexico. A dedicated soldier, smuggler and politician, Tubercio Tapia was granted 13,000 acres of land around the area called Cucamonga by governor Juan Bautista Alvarado on March 3, 1839. Using Indian labor, Tapia constructed a well-fortified adobe home on Red Hill and raised great herds of cattle. Unlike many who had gone before him, Tapia began a successful winery, portions of which stand today known to us as the Thomas Winery.
American forces invaded California in 1846, annexed it in 1848, and made it a state in 1850. Unlike the northern portion of our state during that era, southern California, and specifically Los Angeles, was described as a "random collection of adobes rimmed by sandy wastes, wild mustard, and willow trees."
This mid-nineteenth-century mixture of cultures and lives is well represented in the estate developed by Alabama-born John Rains and his wife Maria Merced Williams de Rains. The Rains purchased the Rancho de Cucamonga in 1858. Before his murder in 1862, Rains greatly expanded the vineyards Tapia had planted and imported brick masons from Ohio, via Los Angeles, to construct the family home, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cucamonga's history stretches back further than most of the other regional communities. President Abraham Lincoln signed into existence a post office located at the base of Red Hill in 1864 the first in the western portion of San Bernardino County. After John Rains' death and Dona Merced's departure, the Rancho went into foreclosure, and in 1870 it was sold to Isaias Hellman and other San Francisco businessmen who later formed the Cucamonga Company. In 1887, both water and access were provided to the Cucamonga colony, as irrigation tunnels were dug into Cucamonga canyon and the Santa Fe Railroad extended through the area. Although early settlers planted and cultivated citrus, olive, peach, and other crops, vineyards and wine making characterized the Cucamonga community.
Men and women from many cultures have shaped Rancho Cucamonga's history. Many Mexican families labored in the vineyards and groves, often living in small, quickly constructed camps, located away from the other centers of settlement. Later, they created a thriving community of their own, known as North Town, in which a dance hall, theater, markets, restaurants, and a church, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, was founded and bound them together. Much of the heritage and built environment of North Town exists today. Likewise, Italian immigrants like the Nosenzos, Guideras, DiCarlos, and Campanellas established a community out along Foothill Boulevard in southern Etiwanda, consisting of homes, wineries of all sizes, and Sacred Heart church.
We invite you to come and see for yourself all that Rancho Cucamonga has to offer.
Sources:
City of Rancho Cucamonga
City of Rancho Cucamonga Visitor Information
