Fontana is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States.

Founded by Azariel Blanchard Miller in 1913,[1] it remained essentially rural until World War II, when entrepreneur Henry J. Kaiser built a large steel mill in the area.

[1][17] 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).

Ro-Val's automobile museum, located on Foothill Boulevard on the western outskirts between Fontana and Cucamonga, was the home for many classic automobiles of the 1920s and 1930s, including a huge vehicle once owned by screen actor Fatty Arbuckle.

This rapid growth was largely due to the numerous large, new residential developments built in the sparsely populated northern part of the city, as well as with the city's aggressive (and highly successful) campaign to annex several unincorporated, but developed, San Bernardino County areas in 2006–2007.

In 2019, the California Air Resources Board advised the City against housing people within 1,000 feet of industrial warehouses because of harmful truck pollution.

[22][23] Most of the city of Fontana, like its eastern neighbors Rialto and San Bernardino, is built atop a geologically young, gently southward-sloping alluvial fan from nearby Lytle Creek, deposited mainly during the Holocene and late-Pleistocene epochs.

There are also sedimentary deposits of similar age from Etiwanda Creek on the western edge of the city.

However, the northern and southern edges of the city are formed by the much older San Gabriel and Jurupa mountain ranges, respectively.

The Jurupa Mountains are composed primarily of Cretaceous and Paleozoic-era rocks, as are the San Gabriels, which also include even older, Proterozoic formations.

[24][25] The most prominent of the San Gabriel Mountains visible from Fontana is Cucamonga Peak, elevation 8,859 feet (2,700 m).

Additionally, the Cucamonga Fault Zone, contiguous with the Sierra Madre Fault Zone, runs through the northern part of the city, along the base of the San Gabriels, notably through the Hunter's Ridge and Coyote Canyon planned communities.

The highest elevation within the city limits is approximately 2,600 feet (790 m), in the northernmost part of the Panorama neighborhood of Hunter's Ridge.

[27] This difference in elevation is due to the southward slope of the Lytle Creek alluvial fan.

The city is frequently affected by the strong, hot and dry Santa Ana winds as they blow through the nearby Cajon Pass of the San Gabriel Mountains, from the Mojave Desert.

According to the 2010 United States Census, Fontana had a median household income of $64,195, with 15.0% of the population living below the federal poverty line.

Originally built as a freight depot of the Pacific Electric Railway in 1915, the Art Depot sits alongside the newly landscaped Pacific Electric Trail in the Helen Putnam Historical Plaza.

They have open rooms used for programs like mixed martial arts, dance, fitness, gymnastics and events.

The city council also failed to follow the Brown Act, which requires public agencies to specifically list closed-session items for terminations.

Private transportation operators that serve the city of Fontana include FuturaNet,[61] El Corre Caminos,[62] TUFESA,[63] Los Limosines,[64] and Santiago Express[65] which serve the predominately the Hispanic community seeking transportation to Tijuana, Gomez Palacio, Las Vegas and El Paso.

Fontana is served by five different water companies, but none of their service areas overlap.

The various facilities are also among the tallest and largest buildings in the city (other than industrial distribution centers).

[69] Located in the north end of the city, along the "Miracle Mile" of Sierra Lakes Parkway and the 210 freeway, is the Sierra San Antonio Medical Plaza, a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) outpatient center and medical office building supported by San Antonio Community Hospital.

Services currently available from SSAMP are urgent care, diagnostic radiology, physician offices, and a pharmacy.

The facility also includes a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) educational suite where community lectures, health screenings, awareness campaigns, maternity and CPR classes are held.

[75][76] Among other allegations, the lawsuit alleged that in 1994 Fontana Police tampered with the corpse of Black murder victim Jimmy Earl Burleson by planting a piece of chicken in the decedent's hand, photographing the victim in this pose, and circulating the photo among the Fontana Police Department for a number of years; the photo in question was later published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel in 2017.

Fontana police officers interrogated Perez for 17 hours, falsely claiming that his father had been found dead with stab marks and "wore a toe tag at the morgue," and that they would have Perez's pet dog euthanized as a result of his actions.

[77][78] After Perez falsely confessed, he was left alone in the interrogation room, where he was captured on video trying to hang himself.