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Where to Stay in Ontario, California
Ontario is a San Bernardino County city in the western Inland Empire, known for Euclid Avenue and for Ontario International Airport.
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Where to stay in Ontario
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Beds cluster in two bands. One runs along Euclid Avenue and the downtown blocks near the Frankish Building and the Ontario State Bank Block, where the older street grid keeps restaurants and the Chaffey Community Museum of Art inside a short walk. The other sits by Ontario International Airport.
Rooms there are built for early departures and for people whose business is the Inland Empire rather than the city, and they are the easiest choice when a flight is the reason for the night. A third option lies south, among the mall floors that pull shoppers in from across San Bernardino County. Parking is the point there.
Hofer Ranch stands away from all three clusters on the agricultural edge, so reaching it means driving, as does any run west into Los Angeles County or east toward San Bernardino. Most people staying in Ontario are passing through on their way somewhere else, and the stock reflects that: much of it sits close to a freeway ramp and is sized for a night or two rather than a week. Your reason for coming picks the band.
Downtown suits a visitor who wants to walk; the airport suits a schedule; the south side suits a car and a boot to fill.
About Ontario
Two things bring people here.
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 in this 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.
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Updated September 2026