Pomona

The city was named after Pomona, the ancient Roman goddess of fruit. For horticulturist Solomon Gates, "Pomona" was the winning entry in a contest to name the city in 1875, before anyone had ever planted a fruit tree there. After native americans had lived in the valley for 7 to 10,000 years, the city was first settled by Ricardo Véjar and Ygnacio Palomares, and these were Californios of the highest order in early Los Angeles and Alta California when they were granted the 1500 acre Rancho San Jose in 1833. This rancho would be divided up into the cities we know today as Pomona, San Dimas, La Verne, Diamond Bar, Azusa, Covina, Walnut, Clairmont and Glendora.

The first Anglo-Americans arrived prior to 1848 when the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo resulted in California becoming part of the United States.[2] In 1864, the widow of Ygnacio Palomares of Rancho San José sold 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) to Louis Phillips, a Jewish Prussian immigrant, who would shortly be known as "the richest man in Los Angeles County." He built the largest commercial building in Los Angeles central business district at the time, the Phillips Block, which would eventually house Hamburger's, the then-largest department store in the Western United StatesSpadra - Phillips sold a parcel of his land to William "Uncle Billy" Rubottom, in 1866 who founded a new town there and named it Spadra after his hometown, now part of Clarksville, Arkansas. The site of Spadra is 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the Pomona Station along Pomona Blvd. just east of the 57 (Orange) Freeway. Spadra became a stagecoach stop, Rubottom built the Spadra Hotel and Tavern to serve travelers, and by 1870, Spadra had 400–500 residents, three stores, a school, and a post office. In 1873, Phillips convinced the Southern Pacific Railroad to build a line to Spadra. Phillips thought Spadra would become a great town, and built his Phillips Mansion there in 1875, which together with the Spadra Cemetery are the only two remnants of the town that still exist today.