Chino is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. It is located in the western end of the Riverside-San Bernardino Area and it is easily accessible via the Chino Valley (71) and Pomona (60) freeways.
Chino is bounded by Chino Hills to the west, unincorporated San Bernardino County (near Montclair) to the north, Ontario to the northeast, unincorporated San Bernardino County to the southeast, and unincorporated Riverside County to the south. The population was 77,983 at the 2010 census.
Chino and its surroundings have long been a center of agriculture and dairy farming, serving the considerable demands for milk products in Southern California and much of the southwestern United States. Chino’s rich agricultural history dates back to the Spanish land grant forming Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. The area specialized in orchard, row crops and dairy. Downtown Chino is home to satellite branches of the San Bernardino County Library and Chaffey Community College, the Chino Community Theatre, the Chino Boxing Club and a weekly Farmer’s Market. In 2008, the city of Chino was awarded the prestigious “100 Best Communities for Youth” award for the second time in three years.[2] Chino hosted shooting events for the 1984 Summer Olympics at the Prado Olympic Shooting Park in the Prado Regional Park. Two California state prisons for adults (California Institution for Men and California Institution for Women), as well as the Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility, lie within the city limits.[3]
The land grant on which the town was founded was called Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. Santa Ana is Spanish for Saint Anne, but the exact meaning of “Chino” has been explained in different ways. One explanation is that the “Chino,” (curly-haired person or mixed-race person) was the chief of the local Native American village.[4] The president of the Chino Valley Historical Society, drawing on US Civil War-era letters, designates the “curl” referenced in the toponym as that at the top of the grama grass that abounded in the valley.