Ontario California
Ontario, California
Ontario, California is a moderate-sized city of modest advertisement: the people number about 160,000 but they keep to themselves for the most part, enjoying the community environment and benefiting economically from the local industries and the Ontario California Airport.
The residents earn an equally modest income, averaging approximately 42,500 dollars a year per household; a stunning 15 ½ percent live below the poverty line. There is no lack of education in Ontario, California, with twenty-five public elementary schools, six middle schools, five high schools, two military schools, numerous private schools, and even nine trade schools and one university (Chapman).… And employment is available in numerous industries—such as manufacturing (which provides the most work, almost twenty percent); education, health, and social services; and retail—with almost a third of the population of Ontario California staying in town to work.
At the same time, Ontario has its moments of claims to fame. It provided the setting—at the old Ontario Airport—for the DeCaprio/ Hanks movie, Catch Me if You Can, the exterior shots of a supposed Miami airport filmed at the old Ontario California airport terminal. According to a trivia buff at IMDB, “This old terminal is still standing, but was converted to office space when the new Ontario California Airport was opened.” Ontario, California is also home to and/or birthplace of “pioneer surfboard maker and catamaran builder” Hobie Alter; Major League Baseball players Rod Barajas, Del Crandall, Prince Fieldler, Al Newman, and Mike Sweeny; famed conductor Robert Shaw; renowned authors Beverly Cleary and Joseph Wambaugh; former Philadelphia Phillies’ manager Nick Leyva; pro footballer Anthony Munoz; and Major League Soccer player Landon Donovan.
And for all its quiet and charming discretion, Ontario California has a couple of best-kept secrets: not only did it undergo a constitutional dispute in 1989 when, after 30 years of displaying the 3-D Jesus scenes on the median at Euclid Avenue, the sculptures were challenged as violating separation of church and state laws, but the city has a reputation with Ripley’s Believe it or Not!…for their picnic table which for an intermittent seventy years has welcomed the diversity of residents every Fourth of July and which is recorded as the world’s longest picnic table. Now THAT’s community.
