The population and steets of Norton Air Force Base are quite low. The base is located in Southern California, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles. According to the 2010 census, the base's population is just under 50,000. This is well below the national average.
Prior to the base's closure in 1994, it was under the Air Force Logistics Command, which was responsible for airlifting goods to the United States and other Allied countries. The base was also a major logistical center for the Air Force's Titan and Atlas missiles. It also operated a Southern California air defense system from 1955 to 1966, designed to prevent a Soviet nuclear attack on the US.
The base was named for Captain Leland Francis Norton, a native of San Bernardino. He was commissioned on 6 September 1942 at Columbus, Mississippi, and had spent the first half of the war in the North Atlantic and Greenland. He was later promoted to captain, and was deployed to England in January 1944 after pre-invasion "softening-up" missions. Sadly, his plane was shot down near Amiens on 27 May 1944.
In a socioeconomic impact analysis report by the U.S. Air Force in 1989, the base supported over twelve thousand civilian jobs. By 1994, the base supported only 6,653 jobs. By that time, only 50 basic maintenance jobs would remain, along with 20 secondary jobs. The downsizing of the base's operational capacity has coincided with a corresponding increase in San Bernardino's unemployment rate.