Westmorland incorporated as a city — giving it a formal governmental structure that many of its neighbors in the Imperial Valley lack as unincorporated communities. With a population around 2,014 people (2020 census), it is one of the smallest incorporated cities in California by population. Approximately 88.7 percent of residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, reflecting the valley's broader demographic character shaped by generations of agricultural labor. The city provides municipal services, including its small police department, within a budget constrained by the modest tax base of a small agricultural community. This balance between formal city status and practical small-town scale defines much of daily life in Westmorland.

In 1981, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck near Westmorland, adding the city's name to the list of Imperial Valley communities associated with seismic events in the region. The Imperial Valley sits atop an active fault system — the same tectonic boundary that produced the much larger 1940 El Centro earthquake and the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake — and smaller events are a recurring feature of life here. For residents of Westmorland and the surrounding communities, earthquakes are not a distant or theoretical risk but a practical reality that shapes how buildings are constructed and how emergency planning is conducted. The 1981 event was not catastrophic, but it was a reminder that the flat agricultural landscape sits on geology that moves.

Like every community in the Imperial Valley, Westmorland's existence depends on the Colorado River water delivered through the Imperial Irrigation District's canal system. The city sits in the center of what would otherwise be uninhabitable Colorado Desert, transformed by irrigation into some of the most productive farmland in the United States. The surrounding fields grow vegetables, alfalfa, sugar beets, and other crops through a growing season that essentially runs year-round, thanks to the warm winters and reliable sunshine. Farm labor employment drives the local economy, tying Westmorland's fortunes directly to agricultural markets, crop prices, and the ongoing negotiations over Colorado River water allocations that affect the entire region.

A police chief and five officers. A city council managing a modest municipal budget. Community events at a scale where everyone who attends knows most of the other attendees. These are the textures of life in Westmorland that do not appear in census data or earthquake catalogs but define the experience of living there. Small cities in agricultural regions serve functions that larger urban centers do not: they are gathering places, service providers, and social anchors for surrounding farming communities that would otherwise have no nearby hub. Westmorland's modest scale is not a sign of decline but of a particular kind of stability — a community that has found its appropriate size and maintained it.