Chino highlight
Proximity to the Prado Basin
The Prado Basin, a 2,000-acre regional park with a historic dam built in 1941, lies at Chino's edge and provides flood control, water management, and year-round recreation for the region.
At the southwestern corner of San Bernardino County, where Chino's neighborhoods meet the county line, lies the Prado Basin: over 2,000 acres of rolling grassland, riparian forest, and the Prado Dam, which completes a federal flood control system along the Santa Ana River. The dam was completed in 1941, after the catastrophic floods of 1937 and 1938 had forced the federal government to undertake what was then the largest flood control project in American history. Today, the dam serves dual purposes: it captures floodwaters from the Inland Empire and manages groundwater storage for the Chino Basin, a system that keeps the region stable through dry years and wet ones alike.
Prado Regional Park, operated by San Bernardino County Parks, surrounds the dam and the basin's reservoir. The park offers 60 acres of year-round fishing for bass and other species, trails through black willow groves, and views across the valley. The landscape is natural and historic: Chino and Mill Creeks flow through it before joining the Santa Ana River, the same waterway that caused the 1937 disaster that led to the dam's construction. The park is open to the public and draws visitors from throughout Southern California seeking a place where water management and nature coexist.
Living near the Prado Basin means living in a landscape shaped by both history and planning—a place where communities learned to work together to manage water, prevent disaster, and build infrastructure that lasts generations. That same kind of thinking applies to household planning: one person's income is the water that flows through the family's needs, and term life insurance is the infrastructure that keeps it stable if the flow stops.