It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is also part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Riverside is the 59th-most-populous city in the United States and the 12th-most-populous city in California. As of the census , it had a population of , Riverside was founded in the early s. It is the birthplace of the California citrus industry and home of the Mission Inn , the nation's largest Mission Revival Style building. The University of California, Riverside , is in the northeastern part of the city.
The university hosts the Riverside Sports Complex. In the late 18th century and the early 19th century, the area was inhabited by Cahuilla and the Serrano people.
Californios such as Bernardo Yorba and Juan Bandini established ranches during the first half of the 19th century. In the s, Louis Prevost launched the California Silk Center Association , a short-lived experiment in sericulture. In the wake of its failure, John W. North purchased some of its land and formed the Southern California Colony Association to promote the area's development. In March , North distributed posters announcing the formation of a colony in California.
Riverside was temperance -minded, and Republican. There were four saloons in Riverside when it was founded. The license fees were raised until the saloons moved out of Riverside.
As a result, the first golf course and polo field in southern California were built in Riverside. The first orange trees were planted in , with the citrus industry Riverside is famous for beginning three years later [ 15 ] when Eliza Tibbets received three [ 15 ] Brazilian navel orange trees sent to her by a personal friend, William Saunders , a horticulturist at the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.
