Fontana is a city in San Bernardino County, California, in the Inland Empire, roughly 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It is the second-most-populous city in the county, with about 220,000 residents, and it anchors the western end of the county at a strategically important freeway junction where Interstate 10 and Interstate 15 cross. The San Bernardino Mountains rise to the north, giving much of the city a scenic mountain backdrop, and the region's rail corridors and proximity to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have made Fontana one of the most significant logistics and distribution centers in the United States. The city's modern identity traces to 1942, when industrialist Henry J. Kaiser opened a steel mill that was the first of its kind on the West Coast. The Kaiser Steel plant flourished during World War II and the postwar decades, supplying steel for shipbuilding, automobiles, and consumer goods and transforming Fontana from a small citrus and farm community into an industrial city. When the mill declined and closed in the 1980s, Fontana faced a major economic transition, redeveloping former industrial land into housing, commercial centers, and warehousing. That redevelopment reshaped Fontana. The Auto Club Speedway, a major motorsports venue, was built on part of the former Kaiser Steel site, and the city's freeway position drew an enormous concentration of logistics and distribution facilities that now define its economy. The surrounding landscape illustrates the layered Inland Empire pattern: farmland, wartime industry, racing, logistics, and new residential development pressed together in a broad valley. Residentially, Fontana offers a wide range of housing, from older single-family homes near its historic core to large newer subdivisions on the city's northern and western edges. The city maintains more than 40 parks and recreation facilities, and its schools are served by several districts, with Fontana Unified School District covering the majority of the city. Fontana suits households seeking relatively attainable housing, strong freeway access, and proximity to the Inland Empire's logistics and employment base, within commuting reach of both Los Angeles and San Bernardino.