US Map / Cities / Riverside

Riverside Map

Riverside sits at the closed eastern end of the Los Angeles basin, on the Santa Ana River at the point where the coastal air finally runs out of room.

Where is Riverside?

Riverside is about 55 miles east of downtown Los Angeles in California's Inland Empire, the fast-growing inland half of Southern California. Anaheim is roughly 30 miles west through the Santa Ana Canyon, Santa Ana about 35 miles southwest, and San Diego some 90 miles south. San Bernardino, the other Inland Empire anchor, is only about 12 miles north. Riverside is far enough from the coast that its summers run 15 to 20 degrees hotter than Santa Monica's on the same afternoon.

Riverside at a glance

Riverside in California

Riverside is the seat of Riverside County, which stretches roughly 180 miles east from here to the Arizona line and takes in Palm Springs, Joshua Tree country and a long stretch of desert — one of the largest counties in the country by area, as the California county map makes clear. The city is the county's largest and its historic center, and the University of California campus here grew out of the citrus experiment station the university established in Riverside in 1907. Los Angeles and Orange counties export both people and traffic here: much of the warehouse capacity serving the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles is in this county, as the California state page outlines.

The Santa Ana River, the orange and the smog

The Santa Ana River runs past the northwest side of the city on its way from the San Bernardino Mountains through the Santa Ana Canyon to the sea. Riverside took its name from it and its fortune from what it made possible: in 1873 two Washington navel orange trees were planted here from cuttings sent from Brazil, and nearly every navel orange grown in California descends from them. One of the original trees still stands at a street corner in the city. Riverside sits at about 850 feet, hemmed by the Box Springs Mountains to the east and Mount Rubidoux above the river. That bowl at the closed end of the basin is also where the air from the coast finally stops: the sea breeze off the Pacific coast pushes Los Angeles pollution inland all day and the mountains hold it, which is why inland air quality is consistently worse than coastal.

Cities near Riverside

Anaheim, Santa Ana and Irvine lie west in Orange County, Los Angeles and Long Beach beyond them, and San Diego to the south. Try placing the western states on the West region quiz.