Riverside County is located in California and is one of 58 counties located there. As of 2010, the population of this county was over 2,100,000 which make it the 4th most populated county in California and the 11th most populated in the whole United States. The name Riverside County came from the city Riverside, which happens to the be county seat.
Riverside County is part of the Riverside-Ontario-San Bernardino, California Metropolitan Statistical Area which is also called the Inland Empire. The county is also part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach Combined Statistical Area. There is a lot of sprawling tract housing communities around the Riverside area and along Interstate 215, 15 and 10.
Riverside County is somewhat rectangular and actually covers over 7,000 square miles in Southern California which goes from the greater Los Angeles area to the Arizona border. When it comes to geographically, the county is mostly desert in the eastern and central parts, but it does have a Mediterranean climate that is in the western part. Most of the Joshua Tree National Park is within Riverside County.
When you travel to Riverside County, you will enter into plenty of resort cities such as La Quinta, Desert Hot Springs, Palm Springs, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert and even the Coachella Valley. There have been a large number of workers from Los Angeles, California that have moved into this county starting in 2007 to be able to take advantage of affordable housing. Riverside County is one of the fastest growing counties in California before the recent changes to the economy. You can really get an idea about the way the population grew by taking a look at Murrieta and Temecula which accounted for over 20% of the population increase in Riverside County from 2000 to 2007. Additionally, smaller but large numbers of people have been moving into the Southwest Riverside County from the Tijuana-San Diego metropolitan area. Other notable areas, Corona, CA & Perris, CA
There were indigenous people who live in what is now Riverside County and they are the Cahuilla, Luiseno, and Cupeno. The Cahuilla lived to the north and east of the Lusieno who were in the inland valleys, San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains as well as the desert of the Salton Sink. The Luiseno lived within the Temecula and Aguanga Basins, Eastern Santa Ana Mountains, Elsinore Trough, and south into San Diego County.
Whenever the first 27 counties were established within 1850, the area that is Riverside County was actually divided between San Diego and Los Angeles Counties. Then during 1853, the eastern part of Los Angeles County was used to make San Bernardino County. During the 2 years between 1891 to 1893, there were several proposals and attempts to make new counties within Southern California. These particular proposals included San Jacinto county and Pomona County. The proposals were adopted until the creation of Riverside County was adopted and signed in by Governor Henry Markham in 1893.
Riverside County was made from parts of San Diego County and San Bernardino County and over 70% of voters had approved the forming of Riverside County. They then choose the city of Riverside to be the county seat. In May of 1893, Riverside county was formed when the final canvass of votes was filed by the Board of Commissioners.