Kaiser Steel changed Fontana from farm town to industrial city

Fontana has farms in its older story, but Kaiser Steel marks the city’s big industrial turn. During World War II, Henry J. Kaiser needed a steady supply of steel for shipbuilding. In 1942, he established Kaiser Steel in Fontana.

The mill tied Fontana to a huge wartime production system. Steel from the plant helped Kaiser speed up shipbuilding, with some ships taking far less time to build than the old average. For Fontana, the point is simple: the city became part of a national push to build faster during the war.

The plant also shaped daily life. At its peak, Kaiser Steel employed more than 2,500 workers. It had its own newspaper and medical facility. In 1943, Kaiser and Dr. Sidney Garfield opened a 50-bed hospital in Fontana to care for workers and their families, with a prepaid health plan that helped lead toward the Kaiser Permanente story.

The steel mill later closed in the 1980s, and parts of the land took on new uses. Some of the old site became Auto Club Speedway, while another portion continued in steel production. That layered reuse is very Inland Empire: farm land, wartime industry, health care, racing, logistics, and new development all pressed into the same broad valley.

Kaiser Steel is not the whole story of Fontana, but it explains why the city feels different from a simple Route 66 or citrus town. A major industrial chapter happened here, and it still shapes how the place is remembered.