< The Latest 2025-10-19T14:30:57+0000
The Pasadena Star-News | Sun 10/19 07:30am PST | David Allen
The tiny Richfield service station was ahead of its time when it was built on Foothill Boulevard in Cucamonga in 1915. Gasoline-powered automobiles were just catching on. Foothill wouldn’t become Route 66 for another 11 years.
In the early 1970s, after freeways siphoned away traffic and rendered Route 66 obsolete, the Cucamonga Service Station closed.
Improbably, the vacant building survived into the 21st century despite being left to rot. And just by hanging on until tastes changed and Route 66 nostalgia took hold, the service station was able to make a U-turn.
Volunteers, many of them car enthusiasts, banded together to restore the Spanish Revival structure after Rancho Cucamonga leaders gave it protected status.
In 2015, a century after its construction, the building reopened as the Cucamonga Service Station Route 66 Museum. And last Wednesday, volunteers marked the museum’s 10th anniversary.
Forty or so of us gathered at the little station (9670 Foothill Blvd.) for a short ceremony, with remarks from museum volunteers and reps for state, county and city officials.
“For 110 years this building has stood the test of time,” a certificate from County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez begins.
“It’s just an iconic place here in Rancho Cucamonga,” someone from City Hall said.
That’s a far cry from its likely fate in 2009. Lamar Advertising, a billboard company, sought a demolition permit. The City Council instead gave the building landmark status and got Lamar to donate the property to a newly formed nonprofit, Route 66 Inland Empire California.
Its volunteers, some of whom had construction expertise, did much of the labor to pour a concrete pad, remove rotted wood, replace the roof, restore utility service and apply fresh stucco.
Along the way, they got a pleasant surprise. The little white building hadn’t always been painted white. It was originally canary yellow. The station was repainted in the same shade.
“People would come and say, ‘you’re painting it the wrong color.’ We said, ‘we’re painting it the original color,’” David Dunlap, one of the board members, told me.
The bright paint made the station visible again to speeding motorists and added charm.
The Cucamonga Service Station Route 66 Museum is profiled in Todd Lerew’s 2024 book “Also on View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles.” Calling it “a little yellow jewel box of the Inland Empire,” Lerew said it might be the oldest gas station building in California.
The location along Route 66 is crucial. About 200 to 250 people stop by each month.
“About one-fourth of the visitors we get are from other countries,” Dunlap said.
I paged through the visitor register, which begins just after Labor Day. In the six weeks since, of course many names are locals from Rancho Cucamonga or Fontana, or from cities around California. Others had come from elsewhere in the U.S., including Hawaii, Arizona, Kansas, Alabama, South Carolina, St. Louis and New York City.
But people had also signed in from Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, England, South Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Norway, Canada, Australia and Taiwan. In six weeks, mind you.
“It surprises me how popular Route 66 is in other countries,” Dunlap said. “My wife and I were volunteering one day and our first visitors were from Luxembourg.”
Luxembourg is roughly the same size as the 400-square-foot museum. The visitors must have felt at home immediately.
“When they think of America, they think of car culture, and the first thing they think of is Route 66,” Dunlap explained. A couple from England, he said, spent their honeymoon in the U.S. doing a road trip on 66, which included a stop at the museum.
Two men from the French Route 66 Association visited one day. Then a man from Japan entered, to everyone’s delight. The three had met at another Route 66 site. “They screamed at each other,” Dunlap said.
The register is a new feature, instituted to help the museum in its quest for grants. “Best thing we’ve ever done,” said Anthony Gonzalez, the nonprofit’s president. He called the number of visitors, and their points of origin, the biggest surprise of the museum’s first decade.
“Everybody expected them all to be U.S. citizens,” Gonzalez admitted.
At the ceremony, Gonzalez said: “We had a couple and their child from Moscow. They heard about our museum in their native country. That’s how far we’ve reached.”
In the museum, displays tell the story of the Richfield station and its revival.
A mannequin wears a Richfield attendant’s jumpsuit, coin changer on its belt.
A framed bill from the Cucamonga Service Station dated Nov. 1, 1938 shows a customer’s running tab for gas, oil and bulbs. The $24.31 charge was “due and payable on or before the 10th of the month.” The donor had found the bill — unpaid or paid? We’ll never know — in his grandfather’s desk drawer.
Entry is free to the museum, which is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday to Sunday, impressive given that it’s staffed by volunteers. The gift shop sells T-shirts, caps, magnets, pins, patches, shot glasses, books and more.
Since 2015, a freestanding restroom was built to match the original. “It’s written up as the cleanest restroom on Route 66,” said an amused Alan Ryan, the volunteer who led the project.
Next up may be rebuilding the rear garage, which collapsed in 2011. The replica garage would total 2,035 square feet, about half of which would be used for a larger museum.
The nonprofit hopes to get city approval, then begin applying for grants and raising money to pay for construction, expected to cost $600,000, possibly more. They have $80,000 on hand.
The museum is likely to get even more attention and visitors in 2026, the centennial of Route 66.
Bob LaFrance wore a Route 66 jacket to the ceremony. He has been volunteering at the site since 2012 and serves as a docent with his wife, Holly.
He remembers hunting rabbits on Alta Loma scrubland now turned into housing. He had doubted the Richfield station would survive. Once it did, he signed on to help.
“Civilization just moves on. They build something and tear it down and build something new,” LaFrance mused. “I wanted to be connected to something that wasn’t going anywhere.”
David Allen stays put Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.