From Kansas Colony to Teepee Motel: Route 66 Through Rialto
There is a particular quality to Route 66 in Rialto, California that distinguishes it from the more celebrated landmarks to the east and west. It does not have the 1915 Cucamonga Service Station’s restored Richfield glamour to the west, or the Wigwam Motel to the east — wait, actually it does have the Wigwam Motel, or very nearly so, since the famous teepee motor court sits right on the Rialto–San Bernardino border and carries a Rialto mailing address. But more than any single landmark, Rialto’s Route 66 story is the story of the Inland Empire’s transformation — from the Kansas Colony citrus community of 1887, to the orange-grove-lined highway corridor of the 1930s and 1940s, to the motel-and-drive-in suburban sprawl of the 1950s and 1960s, to the postindustrial Inland Empire of today. That arc is compressed into Foothill Boulevard, which carries Route 66 through Rialto from east to west, and which still retains enough surviving motel neon, drive-in history, and mid-century commercial archaeology to reward the Route 66 traveler who is willing to look.
Rialto is a city of approximately 100,000 people in San Bernardino County, occupying a roughly 4-by-8.5-mile area between San Bernardino to the east and Fontana to the west. It sits at an elevation of 1,203 feet in the Inland Empire — that sprawling urban region between the San Bernardino Mountains and the Los Angeles County line that has been one of the fastest-growing areas in California for the past half-century. In 1920, Rialto’s census population was 961 people. By 1960 it had reached 18,567. By 1970 it was 28,370. That rate of postwar growth — more than eighteen-fold in forty years — means that the mid-century Route 66 landscape that travelers on the highway experienced in the 1940s and 1950s has been largely replaced by the residential and commercial development that followed. But “largely” is not “entirely,” and what survives along Foothill Boulevard in Rialto has genuine Route 66 character.
Where Does Route 66 Run Through Rialto?
Route 66 runs along Foothill Boulevard through Rialto from east to west. The highway enters Rialto from San Bernardino to the east and continues west into Fontana on the same Foothill Boulevard alignment that carries Route 66 through most of the Inland Empire. Rialto’s section of Foothill Boulevard is approximately 5 miles long, running from the city’s eastern boundary (where the Wigwam Motel sits near the San Bernardino border) to the western boundary where Foothill Boulevard crosses into Fontana at North Maple Avenue.
From Interstate 210 (Foothill Freeway): Multiple exits connect to Foothill Boulevard in Rialto. The Riverside Avenue exit and the Ayala Drive exit are the most useful for accessing the central Foothill Boulevard corridor. From Interstate 10: Take Riverside Avenue north to Foothill Boulevard and turn east or west as needed. Rialto is also served by the Metrolink San Bernardino Line with a Rialto Station providing rail connections from downtown Los Angeles.
Rialto’s History: Kansas Colony, Citrus Groves, and the Mother Road
The Name: From Venice to the Inland Empire
Rialto takes its name from one of the most storied addresses in the world. The word “Rialto” is a contraction of the Italian words “Rivo Alto” — “high river” or elevated mudflat — the island where the first inhabitants settled to found Venice around 800 AD. The Rialto district became the mercantile quarter of medieval Venice, and the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal, built in 1588, made the name a synonym for “business district” around the world. When the Methodist settlers who founded the California community in 1887 chose the name, they were believed to have been honoring the famous Venetian bridge as a gesture of civic aspiration — a small California citrus town naming itself after one of the great commercial landmarks of European history.
The Founding: Semi-Tropic Land Company and the Kansas Colony, 1887
The modern history of Rialto begins in 1887, when the Semi-Tropic Land and Water Company established the “Rialto colony” as one of multiple townsites it was developing in the San Bernardino Valley (also founding Bloomington, Sansevaine, and what would become Fontana). The Semi-Tropic company brought water from Lytle Creek near San Bernardino to these communities using a six-mile concrete-lined canal — a remarkable early infrastructure project that made citrus cultivation in the area possible. The company eventually over-leveraged itself, was foreclosed, and its lands were acquired by the “Kansas Colony” — a group of settlers primarily from Halstead, Kansas, who were predominantly Methodist in denomination.
The Kansas Colony settlers envisioned Rialto as a citrus-farming community with cultural and educational ambitions: they planned to build a college. The college was never built, but the community persisted and grew. By 1893 — just six years after founding — Rialto had six businesses, a school, and 35 homes. The Rialto Hotel was built in 1887 (it burned in 1907). The first school district was founded in 1891. The first official settling of the area had actually occurred in 1851, when the Mountain family purchased land from the Lugo family of Rancho San Bernardino — a pre-Anglo California land grant connection that grounds Rialto’s history in the Spanish and Mexican colonial era that preceded the American period.
Citrus Capital: “Several Orange-Packing Plants” on Route 66
By the early 20th century, Rialto’s agricultural identity was firmly established around citrus. The city incorporated in 1911, and by the time Route 66 arrived in 1926, the area supported multiple citrus packing operations. The 1939 WPA Guide to the Golden State described the Route 66 corridor at this point memorably: “West of SAN BERNARDINO, is RIALTO, 3 m. (1,203 alt., 1,642 pop.), with several orange-packing plants. From here US 66 runs through billowing foothills past miles of citrus groves and vineyards.” At the peak of the citrus era, Rialto supported more than 10,000 orange trees and sent fruit to markets across the country through its packing plants. The Rialto Boy citrus brand — documented in a famous 1920 label — was part of the elaborate visual culture of the California citrus industry that made the San Bernardino Valley’s fruit famous nationally.
Route 66 was aligned along Foothill Boulevard (already improved as a motor route since 1913) when the highway was commissioned in 1926. The National Park Service’s 1914 Pacific Electric Railway line had also come through Rialto, adding rail connectivity to the highway connection. For the Route 66 traveler of the late 1920s and 1930s, Rialto was the transition point from San Bernardino’s urban character into the long orange-grove-lined corridor that stretched west through Fontana, Cucamonga, and Upland — the picturesque agricultural landscape described so vividly by the WPA writers.
The Postwar Boom and Citrus’s End
The transformation that Route 66 travel writers documented across the California Inland Empire happened especially rapidly in Rialto. The citrus industry that had defined the area was hit by disease and superseded by the economic logic of suburban development in the postwar period. The California Historic Route 66 Association notes the demographic data that captures the change precisely: Rialto’s census population of 961 in 1920 grew to 3,156 by 1950, then exploded to 18,567 by 1960 and 28,370 by 1970. During that same decade of the 1950s to 1960s, citrus groves gave way to tract homes, and the Route 66 commercial strip on Foothill Boulevard developed the motel-and-service-station character that would define it through the highway’s active years and leave scattered survivors for today’s travelers.
The Wigwam Motel: One of Route 66’s Most Famous Landmarks
The single most celebrated Route 66 landmark in the Rialto area — and one of the most iconic on the entire California corridor — is the Wigwam Motel at 2728 West Foothill Boulevard. The motel is officially addressed in Rialto but is physically located at the city’s eastern border with San Bernardino — the two cities share the Wigwam Motel as a landmark in the way that the highway’s communities often shared the most distinctive features of their border zones. The Wigwam Motel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (listed 2012) and received the National Historic Route 66 Federation’s 2005 Cyrus Avery Award for outstanding preservation — the highest preservation honor on the Mother Road.
Wigwam Village #7: The Last One Frank Redford Built
The Wigwam Motel is technically “Wigwam Village #7” — the seventh and final property built by Frank Redford, the Kentucky-born entrepreneur who invented and patented the Wigwam Village concept. Redford’s story begins in 1933, when he opened a teepee-style service station in Horse Cave, Kentucky, modeling his design after a teepee-shaped building he had seen in Long Beach, California. After customers requested overnight accommodation, he expanded with six teepee-shaped cabins, obtained a U.S. Design Patent (No. 98,617) in 1936, and built his second Wigwam Village in Cave City, Kentucky, in 1937. By 1950, seven Wigwam Villages had been built in total.
Unlike the other five Wigwam Villages — which were built by licensees who paid Redford a royalty of one half of one percent of profits — Villages #2 (Kentucky), #3 (Alabama), #5 (Mississippi), #6 (Arizona), and #7 (California) were Redford’s own projects or closely supervised by him. Village #7 at the Rialto–San Bernardino border was built between 1947 and 1949 and opened for business as the seventh and last Wigwam Village that Redford himself would construct. He grew too ill to continue and turned operations over to his friend Paul Young (who had managed operations in Kentucky), and Young died a few years later in 1961. Of the seven original Wigwam Villages, only three survive today — Village #2 in Cave City, Kentucky; Village #6 in Holbrook, Arizona; and Village #7 in Rialto/San Bernardino, California. The two on Route 66 (Arizona and California) are the most visited.
The Wigwam Village #7 Layout and Architecture
Wigwam Village #7 consists of nineteen 32-foot-tall wigwam-shaped cabins, each with a 20-foot diameter, arranged in two roughly semicircular arcs around a central lobby wigwam that serves as the hotel reception desk and a Route 66 gift shop. A kidney-shaped swimming pool is adjacent to the lobby, and the grounds include a BBQ area and classic cars displayed on the property — a visual reference to the automobile culture that Route 66 embodied. Each wigwam has its own parking spot and a street light capped by a Route 66 emblem.
The wigwams feature the characteristic design elements of the Redford concept: rolled-up flap designs, diamond-shaped windows, and poles sticking out of the top to simulate the appearance of Native American teepees — though it should be noted, as the Wigwam Motel itself is careful to explain, that a “wigwam” (derived from the Algonquian “wikewam”, meaning “dwelling”) is actually a different structure from a “teepee” (the conical tent of the Plains peoples made from animal hides). The popular conflation of the two was part of the mid-century American roadside entertainment culture that Redford exploited skillfully. Village #7 also has a zigzag design drawn across the middle of the outer walls — a distinctive feature not found in all Wigwam Villages.
From Seedy to Celebrated: The Patel Family Restoration
The Wigwam Motel’s history through the second half of the 20th century is a familiar Route 66 story: after the decline of highway traffic brought by the Interstate system, the property cycled through owners who failed to maintain it adequately. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the motel had developed a “rather seedy reputation,” as the National Park Service puts it, and its future was uncertain. The rescue came from an unexpected direction: the Patel family — immigrants from India who had operated a nearby motel since the mid-1980s — purchased Wigwam Village #7 in 2002. Despite the property’s deteriorated condition, the Patel family worked to restore it, improving both the interiors and exteriors of the wigwam cabins and the landscaping. The restoration was sufficiently impressive to earn the National Historic Route 66 Federation’s 2005 Cyrus Avery Award, and the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. Today the Wigwam Motel is a shining example of what dedicated ownership can do for a Route 66 landmark.
The Cars Connection: Cozy Cone Motel
Younger visitors to the Wigwam Motel will recognize its silhouette instantly: the Wigwam Village concept was the direct inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel in Pixar’s Cars (2006) — the cone-shaped motel operated by Sally Carrera in Radiator Springs, where each room is shaped like a traffic cone. Pixar’s art directors, who traveled the entire Route 66 alignment to research the film, visited the Wigwam Motel and incorporated its essential character (individual cabin structures arranged around a central facility) into the Cozy Cone concept. The Wigwam Motel now acknowledges this connection with a commemorative metal plate on the property. Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim features a real-life Cozy Cone food court in Cars Land, making the Rialto Wigwam Motel one of only two physical Route 66 landmarks (alongside the highway itself) that has been directly replicated inside a major theme park.
Visiting the Wigwam Motel
Address: 2728 West Foothill Boulevard, Rialto / San Bernardino, CA 92376. The motel is open for overnight guests year-round. Room rates typically range from $90 to $140 per night depending on room type, season, and day of the week. Dogs are accommodated for a nominal fee. The Route 66 gift shop in the lobby wigwam is accessible to non-guests and is a good source of Route 66 memorabilia for the collector. Even if you are not staying overnight, a drive through the property — past the teepee cabins, the classic cars, the kidney-shaped pool — is worth the few minutes it takes.
Other Route 66 Landmarks Along Foothill Boulevard in Rialto
The El Rey Motel
At 454 East Foothill Boulevard, the El Rey Motel (Spanish for “The King”) is one of the surviving mid-century motor courts on Rialto’s Route 66 alignment. The motel appears in the 1959 aerial photograph of the area, confirming its Route 66-era origin, and continues to operate today. Its position at this address on Foothill Boulevard places it in the heart of the Route 66 commercial strip that developed through the late 1940s and 1950s as the Inland Empire’s population began its dramatic postwar expansion. The El Rey Motel’s neon sign — photographed and documented by Route 66 historians — is one of the surviving examples of the mid-century motel sign culture that once lined Foothill Boulevard through Rialto.
The Rex Motel and Fiesta Motel
Alongside the El Rey, the Rex Motel and the Fiesta Motel are additional surviving Route 66-era motor courts on Rialto’s Foothill Boulevard — a cluster of independently owned motels that represent the mid-century lodging culture of the highway’s California Inland Empire corridor. These are working motels, not preserved museums: they serve the contemporary needs of the communities around them while carrying the architectural footprint and in some cases the neon signage of their Route 66 origins. For travelers interested in the “authentic” Route 66 motel experience — unrestored, unsanitized, genuinely mid-century — these establishments offer it.
“Nervous Ned’s” and Rialto’s Gas Station Culture
Route 66 through Rialto in its mid-century heyday was dense with service stations — every variety of independent and branded petroleum company competing for the business of travelers coming off Cajon Pass and heading west toward Los Angeles. One of the most colorful survivors of this era was the property at 312 East Foothill Boulevard — a gas station known locally by the nickname “Nervous Ned’s”, derived from a local urban legend that the proprietor was called “Nervous” because he got robbed frequently. The original neon sign for the station was a remarkable piece of roadside art: a gigantic oil derrick spewing oil with the words “Jet Flame Gasoline” at the top — one of the more dramatic gas station signs documented along the California Route 66 corridor. The sign was replaced by a simpler green arrow neon; the building itself survived and operates today as a hardware store.
The Foothill Drive-In Theatre
The intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Acacia Avenue was once home to the Foothill Drive-In Theatre — located at 571 East Foothill Boulevard on the southeastern corner of the intersection. The Foothill Drive-In opened in 1948 and could accommodate 675 cars — a substantial mid-century installation that reflected the explosive postwar growth of both automobile culture and suburban entertainment. The marquee featured a striking design: a vertical pylon with the name “Foothill” and a low parapet beneath it reading “Drive Inn Theater”, completed by a curving wave-form shape that was characteristic of the exuberant mid-century commercial signage tradition. The drive-in closed in 1988 — a casualty of the same forces that closed drive-ins across America as the suburban retail landscape shifted toward multiplexes and the cable television era reduced the evening outing to the movies.
Route 66 Through Rialto: The WPA’s 1939 View
Perhaps no description of what Route 66 through Rialto looked and felt like at its citrus-era peak is more evocative than the 1939 WPA Guide to the Golden State‘s account of the corridor immediately west of San Bernardino: “West of San Bernardino US 66 runs along the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains through the heart of a picture post card landscape orange groves overlooked by snowcapped peaks. The tile-roofed stucco towns among the orchards along the way are starting points for roads and trails into the forested mountains.”
And specifically of Rialto: “RIALTO, 3 m. (1,203 alt., 1,642 pop.), with several orange-packing plants. From here US 66 runs through billowing foothills past miles of citrus groves and vineyards.” That landscape — the “picture postcard” quality of snow-capped peaks above orange groves on either side of the highway — is the Route 66 through Rialto that travelers of the 1930s experienced, and it is the landscape that the postwar suburban expansion replaced entirely. Understanding it helps the contemporary traveler appreciate what was lost, and why the surviving neon signs and mid-century motels matter as physical evidence of that vanished world.
Practical Information for Your Rialto Route 66 Visit
Getting to Rialto
From the East (from San Bernardino): Follow Foothill Boulevard west from San Bernardino. The Wigwam Motel is approximately 2 miles from the I-215/Foothill Boulevard interchange, at the San Bernardino–Rialto border.
From the West (from Fontana): Follow Foothill Boulevard east from Fontana. Cross North Maple Avenue (the old Fontana–Rialto boundary) into Rialto.
From Interstate 210 (Foothill Freeway): Take the Riverside Avenue exit south to Foothill Boulevard, or the Ayala Drive exit. Both connect to the Route 66 corridor.
From Interstate 10: Take Riverside Avenue north approximately 3 miles to Foothill Boulevard and turn east or west as needed.
By Metrolink: The Rialto Station on the Metrolink San Bernardino Line provides rail access from downtown Los Angeles (Union Station). The station is a short distance from Foothill Boulevard.
Time Required
A focused Rialto Route 66 visit — the Wigwam Motel (including a walk through the property and a stop at the gift shop), the El Rey Motel, the Foothill Drive-In site, and the Nervous Ned’s hardware store — requires approximately 1–2 hours. Adding a meal or overnight at the Wigwam Motel extends the visit significantly and provides the most authentic Route 66 experience available in Rialto. Westward, the Cucamonga Service Station and the Sycamore Inn are approximately 15 miles along Foothill Boulevard.
Climate
Rialto has a Continental Mediterranean climate — hot and dry summers with cool winters. Summer temperatures can reach 96°F or higher, particularly during the periods when the Santa Ana winds blow warm, dry air through Cajon Pass in autumn. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) are the most comfortable visiting seasons. Winter months bring cool temperatures with the San Gabriel Mountains occasionally snow-capped above Foothill Boulevard — the visual that the 1939 WPA Guide described as the “picture postcard landscape” of Route 66 through Rialto at its orange-grove peak.
Dining Near Route 66 in Rialto
Rialto’s Foothill Boulevard has a full range of chain and independent dining options. For Route 66 character, the most direct option is the Wigwam Motel itself, which sometimes offers food service on the property. Eastward in San Bernardino, the Route 66 connection at the Original McDonald’s site (where the first McDonald’s system restaurant opened on the Foothill Boulevard corridor) provides a historically connected dining experience. Westward, the Sycamore Inn in Rancho Cucamonga offers full-service steakhouse dining in the oldest continuously operating restaurant building on the California Route 66 corridor.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights in the Inland Empire
The Wigwam Motel, San Bernardino — The full guide to the Wigwam Motel — Wigwam Village #7 — at 2728 West Foothill Boulevard on the Rialto/San Bernardino border. The National Register of Historic Places landmark, 2005 Cyrus Avery Award winner, and inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel in Pixar’s Cars.
Route 66 in San Bernardino, California — About 2 miles east on Route 66, San Bernardino is home to the Original McDonald’s Museum site, the Route 66 corridor through the city, and the full heritage of the gateway city to California’s Inland Empire.
Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga, California — About 15 miles west on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard), the city with the 1915 Cucamonga Service Station Route 66 Museum (National Register, 2018 Governor’s Preservation Award), the Thomas Winery (California’s oldest winery, est. 1839), the Sycamore Inn stagecoach stop (since 1848), and the Magic Lamp Inn neon landmark.
Aztec Hotel, Monrovia — About 35 miles west on Route 66, the 1925 National Historic Landmark is the first Mayan Revival architecture building in the United States — one of the most visually extraordinary stops on California’s entire Mother Road.
Route 66 in Pasadena, California — About 45 miles west on Route 66, Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard corridor hosts the Colorado Street Bridge, Norton Simon Museum, and the Gamble House — celebrating simultaneously the Route 66 Centennial and Colorado Boulevard’s 150th anniversary in 2026.
Route 66 in California — Complete Guide — The full overview of all 314 miles of California’s Route 66 from Needles on the Arizona border through the Inland Empire, San Gabriel Valley, Pasadena, and Los Angeles to the End of the Trail at the Santa Monica Pier.
Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66 is November 11, 2026. The Wigwam Motel in Rialto/San Bernardino — one of Route 66’s most beloved landmarks — is a natural centerpiece of the California Centennial story. Check this page for California centennial events.
Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to all 2,448 miles of the Mother Road, from the Begin sign in Chicago to the End of the Trail at the Santa Monica Pier.
