Riverside

Riverside exists because of two Brazilian orange trees. In 1873, Eliza Tibbets convinced the U.S. Bureau of Agriculture to send her seedless oranges from Bahia, Brazil for experimental planting. She nurtured those 'Washington Navel' oranges in Riverside's soil, and they thrived. By 1882, half a million citrus trees grew in California—almost half in Riverside. By 1895, Riverside was the wealthiest city per capita in the United States.

The wealth came from solving logistics. Refrigerated railroad cars and the Gage Canal irrigation system transformed Riverside from a settlement beside the Santa Ana River (founded 1870) into the capital of California's citrus empire. The industry grew from one million boxes of oranges in 1887 to 65.5 million boxes of oranges, lemons, and grapefruit by 1944. British investors owned the canal system that irrigated over 12,000 acres—the 'Inland Empire' was literally an empire.

The infrastructure of citrus research became UC Riverside. Growers lobbied for a research facility, and in 1906 the Citrus Experiment Station opened on Mount Rubidoux. It moved to its current 475-acre site in 1914—'the entire city turned into the streets' in celebration—and eventually became a full UC campus in 1954. The university that started as citrus research now anchors a metropolitan area of 4 million.

But the hidden history of citrus included African-American grove owners, Italian boarding houses, child laborers called 'ratas,' and a workforce spanning Mexican, Asian, Sikh, and African American communities. The California Citrus State Historic Park now occupies ancestral lands of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples.

By 2026, Riverside tests whether the Inland Empire's second city can transform from logistics hub to innovation center—whether the research university that grew from citrus can seed a post-agricultural economy.