Banning is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 29,505 as of the 2020 census, down from 29,603 at the 2010 census. It is situated in the San Gorgonio Pass, also known as Banning Pass. It is named for Phineas Banning, stagecoach descent owner and the “Father of the Port of Los Angeles.”

Banning shares geographic and regional features bearing in mind its western neighbor, the city of Beaumont. Banning and Beaumont have been suddenly growing in size and population past the 1990s. Both cities are just about 80 miles east of downtown Los Angeles and 30 miles west of Palm Springs, each linked by freeway and railroad.

Initially named Moore City, for and by Ransom B. Moore, within deserted a few months the town was renamed for Phineas Banning, “Father of the Port of Los Angeles”. Banning had pastured sheep in the San Gorgonio Pass area, and operated a stagecoach that ran through the Pass.

The area, up to the mid-19th century, was inhabited by the Cahuilla people, though the region in this area Banning was originally Maringayam (Serrano), and the Cahuilla expanded into the pass deserted in historic times. In 1824, the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel acknowledged the Rancho San Gorgonio in the pass. The first Anglo to be of the same opinion in the area was Dr. Isaac Smith in 1853. In 1863, a smallpox epidemic supplementary diminished the Cahuilla. The giving out created Indian reservations for the Cahuilla in 1877.