Route 66

People traveling out on the 40 highway (route 66) passed by the sign for years. The signs read U.S. Gypsum Minning Company, but hardy any ever used the road back in the 50's.

When I was in High School several people I knew were killed on Foothill (Route 66) just past the Bridge that crosses Foothill at Bear Gulch.....Back then, Foothill was very narrow and made a sharp turn to the left just as you passed under the bridge.....Baker was still a dirt road and the Mobile Home park that is on Foothill Today, did not exist back then.....A dense grove of Sycamore and Eculipitous Trees lined the road.

After the car crash people were finding body parts for days after the event....One day, a young girl riding her bike reported to police that a head had dropped out of one of the trees almost right in her lap....The sheriffs knowing that the accident scene was still under investigation sent a team out and they did indeed find the head of one of the victims....The Santa Ana's were blowing so other body parts were dropping out of the trees right into the slow lane of Foothill....Needless to say they had to close Foothill down and have crews go up into the trees and look for the rest of the body parts....I dont think they ever found everything though....residents living to the south on arrow reported several dogs were carrying what appeared to them as legs and arms into the fields.

Today, Foothill in the Bridge area is greatly improved but cars doing over 45 still have difficulty stopping at the light on Baker, or making the hard left turn that still exists....As it turns out, work will begin shortly to finally take care of the problem, by rebuilding the bridge and widening Foothill all the way thru Bear Gulch past Baker.

In 1929 when the bridge was built for the old Pacific Electric railroad, Foothill was a mere two lanes wide at that point and because of the slope it was cutting thru it was decided by the railroad to begin the grade almost a half mile before crossing Route 66 as we all know it was called back then.

The first part of the bridge was actually two giant steel girders laid from the Bear Gulch side to the Red Hill side of the road way....It remained that way when the remainder of the wooden trestle was laid down over the top of the, completing the bridge....The bridge was 44 feet long and it was thought it would take care of traffic needs for generations to come....The PE built the bridge for $70,000, or roughly $2 Million in today’s money.

After the race in Corona promoters of racing came up with an idea for a new road race....A road race that many people living today only think is a Hollywood Movie....But in reality, the old time racers were looking for any road surface to race on, and at the mention of a possible race from LA out to the desert communities was something that they lived for.

The final race route would take the drivers from Downtown LA along Garvey Ave, out into the open fields of the future City of Industry along a two lane dirt road called Valley High, today's Valley blvd......Then on Eastwards on today's Holt, which back then was a just completed two lane highway, all oiled paved hard packed dirt, by prisons inmates from the various area jails....As it passed through the small communities of Spadra, then Pomona it headed east again into Ontario, where the race drives would turn north on the split paved Euclid Ave.

In Rancho Cucamonga politics, it is never wise to assume that just because the city council approves a project, that it will ever be built.....I have seen that many times before....It wasn't to long ago that right here at the Pines Mobile Home Park signs were posted in the vacant field adjacent to the park that indicated that over 385 Condos were going to be built....I and several other chairman's got together and killed that deal.....Seems someone forgot that you cant build anything on Foothill that is more than two stories high in a residential area.....We reminded the city council of that.

A few months ago, the city council voted to approve a large project on the corner of Foothill and Grove, on a patch of land that has been owned by the San Antonio Hospital since time immortal....it was always thought that a medical center of some sort would be built on the corner, but year after year, the field remained a large strawberry field.....after all, most residents always assumed that something would be built there, just not what was approved by the city council.

Its that time of the year again, at least for the 18 th annual Stater Bros Route 66 Rendezvous in San Bernardino. Starting next Thursday, the 13th, over 500,000 people are expected to line the streets of Verdue to watch 1,900 classic cars cruiz Fifth street. A 35 block area on the north side of downtown will be blocked off for the 4 day event. This includes the area around Fifth to the north and Rialto Ave. to the south, G street to the west and Sierra Ave to the East.