Chino (ˈtʃiːnəʊ ; Spanish for "Curly") is a city in the western end of San Bernardino County, California, United States, with Los Angeles County to its west and Orange County to its south in the Southern California region. Chino is adjacent to Chino Hills. Chino's surroundings have long been a center of agriculture and dairy farming, providing milk products in Southern California and much of the southwestern United States. Chino's agricultural history dates back to the Spanish land grant forming Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. The area specialized in fruit orchards, row crops, and dairy.
Chino is bounded by Chino Hills and Los Angeles County to the west, Pomona to the northwest, unincorporated San Bernardino County (near Montclair) to the north, Ontario to the northeast, Eastvale to the southeast in Riverside County and Orange County to the southwest. It is easily accessible via the Chino Valley (71) and Pomona (60) freeways. The population was 77,983 at the 2010 census.
Downtown Chino is home to satellite branches of the San Bernardino County Library and Chaffey Community College, the Chino Community Theatre, the Chino Boxing Club and a weekly Farmer's Market. In 2008, the city of Chino was awarded the prestigious "100 Best Communities for Youth" award for the second time in three years. Chino hosted shooting events for the 1984 Summer Olympics at the Prado Olympic Shooting Park in the Prado Regional Park.
The land grant on which the town was founded was called Rancho Santa Ana del Chino. Santa Ana is Spanish for Saint Anne, but the exact meaning of "Chino" has been explained in different ways. One explanation is that the "Chino" (curly-haired person or mixed-race person) was the chief of the local Native American village. The president of the Chino Valley Historical Society, drawing on Civil War-era letters, designates the "curl" referenced in the toponym as that at the top of the grama grass that abounded in the valley.
The Tongva had a settlement called Wapijangna in the Santa Ana River watershed.