Rancho Cucamonga is located about 39 miles east of Los Angeles.
While most of the city’s land area is devoted to residential areas, Rancho Cucamonga, like its neighbors Ontario and
Fontana, is a major center for the Logistics industry in Southern California. This is due to its proximity to two Interstate Highways and Ontario International Airport, and the space afforded by the large tracts of former agricultural land in the southern section of the city. In the area around Milliken Avenue, between Archibald and Etiwanda Avenues, Foothill Boulevard, and Fourth Street, about seven square miles of land are primarily occupied by numerous massive distribution centers, and even more, smaller manufacturing companies. This area is ringed by wealthy office parks, mostly along Haven Avenue, and shopping strips, such as the Terra Vista Town Center (part of a nearly two-square-mile master-planned community in the center of the city), and malls, such as the Ontario Mills, across Fourth Street in Ontario. The city is also the location of The Epicenter, a minor-league baseball stadium, home of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. The Quakes’ mascot, Tremor, is a “Rallysaurus”. A firework show is held after every saturday game.
The Victoria Gardens lifestyle center, built in the eastern end of the city, is located at the intersection of Foothill and Day Creek Boulevards. Since the city had never developed a traditional commercial downtown like neighboring cities Ontario and Upland had, special efforts were made in the design of Victoria Gardens in order to bring elements of more traditional and urban town design to what had historically been a decidedly suburban city. While retaining many characteristics of traditional shopping malls, such as large anchor stores, a food court, and sufficiently vast surrounding parking lots and garages, the smaller stores are arranged as city blocks in a grid of two-lane streets, featuring lush landscaping and metered “teaser parking” in front of the stores, which open right up to the sidewalk.
Rancho Cucamonga is often referred to as the heart of the Inland Empire.