Postcard from Inland Empire

In the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression, farmers who fled West out of the prairies found a paradise of citrus groves in Southern California: miles upon miles of navel and Valencia oranges, planted in a vast swath of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which stretch from East Los Angeles to the Arizona and Nevada borders. Starting in the 1970s, that area, now known as the Inland Empire, became a mecca for a new kind of homesteader: young families lured by cheap land and an easy commute to L.A. By 2008, it was home to 4.1 million people and one...