Pomona, California

Pomona is a city in the San Gabriel Valley of eastern Los Angeles County, California, in the United States. It is the most populous city in the San Gabriel Valley, with 151,713 residents at the 2020 census, and part of its city limits hold the main campus of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, known as Cal Poly Pomona. The area was home to the Tongva people before it passed through Spanish and Mexican claims into the United States. A group of real estate developers held a naming contest in 1875, and the winning entry, from a citrus worker named Solomon Gates, honored Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit. Railroad access and imported water made it the western anchor of the citrus-growing region by the 1880s, and the city was incorporated in 1888. Earlier, the nearby town of Spadra had grown up as a stagecoach stop and railroad terminus before the area was annexed by Pomona in 1964.