San Bernardino (/ˌsæn ˌbɜːrnəˈdiːnoʊ/; Spanish for “Saint Bernardino”) is a city located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. The city serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California. As one of the Inland Empire’s anchor cities, San Bernardino spans 81 square miles (210 km2) on the floor of the San Bernardino Valley to the south of the San Bernardino Mountains. As of 2019, San Bernardino has a population of 215,784 making it the 17th-largest city in California and the 102nd-largest city in the United States. The governments of Guatemala and Mexico have established consulates in the downtown area of the city.

The city of San Bernardino, California, occupies much of the San Bernardino Valley, which indigenous tribespeople originally referred to as “The Valley of the Cupped Hand of God”. The Tongva Indians also called the San Bernardino area Wa’aach in their language. Upon seeing the immense geological arrowhead-shaped rock formation on the side of the San Bernardino Mountains, they found the hot and cold springs to which the “arrowhead” seemed to point.