Adelanto, which means ‘progress’ or ‘advance’ in Spanish, and was originally inhabited by the Serrano  Native American tribe, was considered by the High Desert’s settlers in the late 1800s to be well suited for agricultural purposes, particularly for the growing of deciduous fruit.
Earl Holmes Richardson, originally of Milwaukee, had intentions of transforming the mostly bare desert of Adelanto into a city. He fell short of incorporating it in his lifetime, but he was instrumental in whipping it into a shape that was eventually municipalized.
Richardson made his way to Ontario in 1895 and found a job maintaining and repairing the power plant that electrified the trolley cars that traveled up and down Euclid Avenue. Based on his understanding of electricity and inspired by his wife Mary’s complaint about the inconvenience of having to constantly reheat her traditional clothes iron on the stove, Richardson experimented with using resistive heating from an electrical current to create an electric flat iron.  He designed a small, lightweight model that was easier to wield than the five to ten pound irons of the day. He distributed his model widely around Ontario. Based on further input from his wife, he redesigned his invention to put the heating element closer to the top point of the iron to facilitate pressing around buttonholes, ruffles and pleats. By 1905, his version of the electric “hotpoint” iron was outselling all other electric irons produced by other companies in America. Continue reading →

The Tornadoes, a seminal surf band from Redlands, comprised members who were among the most originally creative purveyors of that genre in the early 1960s. Their 1962 song, “Bustin’ Surfboards” became a number one hit in Southern California and received national airplay, the second surf instrumental to do so.
Released on Aertaun Records, “Bustin’ Surfboards is now considered a classic of its type, indeed a prototype of the surf sound that has been emulated by other bands endlessly, rarely with the same impact. The recording incorporated an opening of an ocean swell that resurfaces at various points throughout the 2:32 song.
“Bustin’s Surfboards” was composed by the band’s lead guitarist, Norman “Roly” Sanders and its drummer, Leonard Delaney. It was recorded at Pal Recording Studios in Cucamonga, with Frank Zappa serving as the engineer.
The other original band members were bassist Gerald Sanders, Norman’s brother; their cousin, rhythm guitarist Jesse Sanders and saxophonist George White. Continue reading →

In 1897, Mrs. Edward Fraser pushed for the creation of “The Township of Marquette,” lying between Pomona to the West and Ontario to the east, for the purpose of developing the property there.
In the early 1900s Emil Firth, a Los Angeles land developer, renamed a 1,000-acre land tract in the area containing Marquette “Monte Vista.” All of the tracts were laid out in 10- 20- and 40-acre lots with special terms as enticements to plant orchards and build homes. The tract opened in 1907, with the first settlement within it called Narod, at a latitude 34.058 and longitude of 117.685, located between what is today Benson Avenue and Vernon Avenue just north of Mission Boulevard. Among the buildings which made up the settlement was a large orange-packing house, the Little White Church of Narod, a hotel and a dry goods store.  The quality of goods at Narod Market attracted shoppers from Ontario and Pomona.
Following the boom after World War II, residents of the Monte Vista Land Tract feared annexation by Ontario, Upland or Chino, and formed the Monte Vista Improvement Association as part of an effort to control their destiny.
In response to a petition by local residents, the district’s first fire department was formed by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in 1948, and in 1949 a $50,000 bond issue was approved to construct a station and buy equipment. In 1950 the station was completed and housed two fire trucks. The department employed three full-time firefighters and 13 who were on call. Continue reading →

Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law Assembly Bill 446, which next year will put into place a requirement that first through sixth graders in California learn cursive handwriting.
Assembly Bill 446, which was authored by Democratic Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva of Fullerton, mandates that teachers instruct cursive writing to first through sixth-grade students rather than limiting instruction on the skill to just one of those years.
Cursive instruction is now as much a part of the curriculum in the Golden State as reading and math.
Once a cornerstone of American education, cursive writing and its instruction has gone out of vogue with the advent of technological advancements, including computerization and keyboarding for input on such devices. This has led to a substantial decline in the skill among students over the last 15 years. Students of school-age at present are far more conversant with digital devices in classroom settings and that has been adapted for remote learning, as well.
In many schools throughout the country, including in California, cursive handwriting is no longer a necessity.
Quirk-Silva went on record as saying that it is her hope that the current and coming generations of students will to be able to read and write in cursive.

Upland was incorporated as a city on May 15, 1906.
At that time it existed as what was perhaps the most significant part of the Greater Ontario area, as it had grown up as a community where the wealthier members of the Ontario business community dwelled in Victorian and early Edwardian homes set amidst citrus groves.
In the early 1880s, Canadians George and William Chaffey were awork establishing irrigation systems that stretched from what is modern-day Ontario out to Etiwanda. Ontario, also known as the Model Colony, was developed as the first residential and commercial center within that area. Ontario incorporated as a municipality in 1891, and its major north-south thoroughfare, Euclid Avenue, extended to what was well north of what was then the Ontario City Limits at G Street. The area north of G Street was at first informally referred to as “North Ontario” or “Magnolia,” a name given it as a consequence of the Magnolia Hotel there. Because Euclid inclined upward toward the foothills below Mount San Antonio as it progressed north, North Ontario/Magnolia were soon referred to as “the upland” and, over time, as Upland.
In 1901, the residents of Upland, highly conscious of the more genteel character of their basically bedroom community compared to the more heavily commercialized Ontario and its earthier and sultrier nature with its concentration of rooming houses, drinking establishments and bordellos, began discussion of incorporating Magnolia as a separate city. Ontario officials moved quickly to stem that, expanding their town’s boundaries, annexing land to become a city of no fewer than 10 square miles.
When Ontario undertook to annex all the way into Magnolia, consisting of the area around modern-day Upland’s downtown, which was to include the Upland Post Office, the tracks for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and the train depot, Magnolia residents moved quickly, appealing to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to arrest Ontario’s hegemonic intent. Beginning on March 12, 1906, the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors conducted a two-day hearing, the upshot of which was that the board agreed to let the voters decide the matter. On May 5, 1906, 202 residents of the Magnolia district of northern Ontario voted on whether to incorporate separately from Ontario, with an overwhelming 183 of those voting to create a new city, San Bernardino County’s fifth, after San Bernardino, Colton, Redlands and Ontario. The City of Upland officially came into existence on May 15, 1906. Continue reading →