Moreno Valley, California

Moreno Valley is a city located in Riverside County, California and is part of the San Bernardino-Riverside Metropolitan Area. A relatively young city, its rapid growth from the 1980s to the early 2000s made it the second-largest city in Riverside County by population, and one of the Inland Empire's population centers. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 193,365. The city is closely tied to Riverside, California, the county seat and largest city in the county, which neighbors Moreno Valley directly to the west. Moreno Valley is also part of the Greater Los Angeles area.

History

Prehistory to 1800s

The Moreno Valley area was first inhabited 2,300 years ago. There are at least 190 prehistoric archaeological locations within the city. The majority of the sites are milling stations - where chaparral seed was the dominant milling activity. Rock art, consisting of pictographs, and petroglyphs are present - though most of the petroglyphs in Moreno Valley consist of boulders with "cupules", or cup-shaped holes pecked into them.