Where to Stay in Ontario, California

What is Ontario known for?

Ontario International Airport serves the Inland Empire and takes pressure off Los Angeles International Airport, while a large mall draws shoppers from across San Bernardino County and the county seat at San Bernardino. Euclid Avenue carries the older story. The Frankish Building and the Chaffey Community Museum of Art hold the downtown end of it.

What are the main landmarks in Ontario?

The list is short and local. The Frankish Building and the Ontario State Bank Block stand on the commercial spine, brick survivors from the decades when Euclid Avenue was the axis every new block in Ontario was measured against. Hofer Ranch holds farmland at the edge.

The Chaffey Community Museum of Art shows work indoors, and the Dr. Orville S. Ensign House rounds out the register.

What is the history of Ontario?

No founding year sits on record. The surviving fabric carries the sequence instead. Hofer Ranch preserves the agricultural ground the city grew out of, while the Ontario State Bank Block and the Frankish Building mark the commercial street that followed, put up when a bank and a business block were the measure of a young town in California.

Euclid Avenue held that axis. Distance shaped what came next. Ontario stands 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and 23 miles west of downtown San Bernardino, near enough to Los Angeles County to fall inside the Greater Los Angeles Area, far enough east to keep a centre of its own in San Bernardino County.

That position produced an airport. Ontario International Airport serves the Inland Empire as its main field and as a less crowded alternative to Los Angeles International Airport, which is why most people first hear the name. The Chaffey Community Museum of Art keeps the older city visible downtown, and the Dr. Orville S. Ensign House survives as domestic work from the years before the freeways reached this part of Southern California.

Neither is what fills the beds. What fills them is the airport, the mall, and the traffic between Los Angeles and the desert side of the county.

Where is Ontario?

Position does most of the work. Ontario lies in southwestern San Bernardino County, in the western part of the Inland Empire metropolitan area, with Los Angeles County starting just to the west and the county seat at San Bernardino some 23 miles east. Downtown Los Angeles is 35 miles off.

The whole city falls inside the Greater Los Angeles Area, well inland of the shore that the rest of Southern California is known for.

What is the climate of Ontario?

The setting is subtropical and inland. Ontario falls in the subtropical band of the northern hemisphere, and the width of Los Angeles County between the city and the open sea leaves the coastal air weaker here than it is on the shore. San Bernardino, further east again, sits deeper inland still.

That distance is the variable worth watching.

How do you get to Ontario?

Most arrivals land here. Ontario International Airport is the main airport serving the Inland Empire, and it works as a less crowded alternative to Los Angeles International Airport for anyone whose business lies east of Los Angeles County. The drive in from downtown Los Angeles runs 35 miles east.

San Bernardino is 23 miles the other way.