Where the Mother Road Meets the Ivy League West: Route 66 Through Claremont

There is no community quite like Claremont, California anywhere else on Route 66‘s 2,448-mile run from Chicago to the Pacific. A city of approximately 37,000 people at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, Claremont is the home of the Claremont Colleges — a consortium of seven highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities that has earned the city the informal title of the “Ivy League of the West.” It is also the “City of Trees” — a designation earned by the extraordinary density and variety of trees lining its streets, including an urban forest of elms that has remained entirely free of Dutch elm disease. Where other Route 66 communities are defined by their motels, diners, or gas stations, Claremont is defined by architecture, academics, gardens, and history — and by a section of Foothill Boulevard that the 1939 WPA Guide described simply as a city “in the midst of citrus groves and vineyards… essentially a college town.”

Route 66 through Claremont runs along Foothill Boulevard — as it does through most of California’s inland corridor — and carries with it a remarkable collection of surviving Route 66-era buildings: Wolfe’s Market (in operation since 1917), the Old School House (1911), the stone building that was the original location of Griswold’s dried fruit and marmalade business (a regular stop for Route 66 travelers), and the Millard Sheets Studio with its distinctive mosaic birds. Off Foothill Boulevard, within easy reach, are the California Botanic Garden (86 acres of native California plants), the Claremont Depot (a National Register of Historic Places Spanish Colonial Revival masterpiece from 1927), and the College Heights Citrus Packing House (the last survivor of four packing houses that made Claremont a center of the California citrus industry). For the Route 66 traveler who wants to understand what the Mother Road through the San Gabriel Valley looked like at its most prosperous and cultured, Claremont is the essential stop.

In 2026, Claremont joins the Route 66 Centennial year celebrations with a community whose historic connection to the highway goes all the way back to 1893 — when Frank Wheeler arrived, surveyed the dirt track that would become Foothill Boulevard, and began the decades-long campaign to turn it into the paved, tree-lined highway that Route 66 would eventually follow. That campaign resulted in Claremont’s section of the highway becoming part of the first four-lane divided highway in California — a distinction confirmed in 1938 that placed Claremont and the Foothill Boulevard corridor at the leading edge of American highway engineering.

Where Does Route 66 Run Through Claremont?

Route 66 runs along Foothill Boulevard through Claremont from east to west. The highway enters Claremont from the east from Upland and continues west into Pomona, with the section through Claremont comprising one of the most historically preserved and architecturally distinguished stretches of the Mother Road in Southern California. The key Route 66 landmarks cluster around the Indian Hill Boulevard intersection at the center of the Foothill Boulevard corridor through Claremont.

From Interstate 10 (San Bernardino Freeway): Take the Indian Hill Boulevard exit north to Foothill Boulevard. From State Route 210 (Foothill Freeway): Exit at Indian Hill Boulevard or Towne Avenue and head south to Foothill Boulevard. The Claremont Metrolink station on the San Bernardino Line (at the historic Claremont Depot at 200 West First Street) provides rail access from downtown Los Angeles, making Claremont one of the most accessible Route 66 communities by public transit in the entire Inland Empire.

Claremont Heritage — the city’s historical preservation organization at 840 North Indian Hill Boulevard — offers a self-guided Historic Route 66 Tour of the Foothill Boulevard corridor, as well as guided walking tours of the Claremont Village (the historic downtown district south of the Metrolink tracks). Contact Claremont Heritage at (909) 621-0848 or email [email protected] for tour details. The office is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Claremont’s History: From Rancho Land to the City of Trees

The Tongva, the Serrano, and the Rancho San José

The area that became Claremont was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before European contact. The California Historic Route 66 Association notes that a Serrano village has been discovered just northeast of the intersection of Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard) and Indian Hill Boulevard — a pre-contact settlement at the heart of what would become the city’s most Route 66-significant commercial block. The broader Tongva people inhabited the surrounding region, known to the Spanish missionaries as the Gabrielino or Gabrieleño. The Spanish reached California from their base in Mexico in the early 1600s and founded the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in 1771, eight miles west of present-day Los Angeles.

The land became part of the Rancho San José — the 15,000-acre Mexican land grant awarded in 1837 to Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Véjar by Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado — the same grant that encompassed what are today Glendora, La Verne, Pomona, and Claremont. The Palomares family’s first Anglo-American arrivals came in the 1870s, led by William “Tooch” Martin who settled on 156 acres at the current site of Eleventh Street and Indian Hill. The area remained essentially open ranchland until the mid-1880s.

The Santa Fe Railroad and the Town’s Founding: 1887

Claremont’s founding is a classic California land-boom story, with the twist that the institution that saved the city from becoming a ghost town was Pomona College rather than an industrial development. In 1883, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later acquired by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad) reached San Bernardino from the east. Its owners secured the right of way across the San Gabriel Valley, building west toward Pasadena and passing through what would become Claremont in January 1887 — the same month that the Pacific Land and Improvement Company platted the Claremont townsite. They cleared the land, built a hotel and a land office, and began selling lots.

The company’s original plan was to name the town after its principal land owner, Henry A. Palmer, who declined. Palmer suggested Spanish names that reflected the view of the San Gabriel Mountains; company directors preferred English equivalents. A director from Claremont, New Hampshire proposed the name “Claremont” — French in origin, from “clair” (bright or clear) and “mont” (hill or mount, from Latin “mons”) — a name evoking both the clarity of the mountain views and the elevation above the valley floor. The name was adopted and remains today.

The expected land boom did not materialize. By 1888, the Southern California real estate speculation bubble had collapsed, and the Hotel Claremont stood empty with lots unsold. The town might have joined the dozens of California land-boom ghost towns except for a pivotal decision: in October 1888, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad transferred the Hotel Claremont to Pomona College — a young institution that had been founded in Pomona in 1887 by the Reverend Charles Burt Sumner along the lines of a New England Congregational college, but that had lost its proposed campus site. Pomona College moved into the former hotel over the Christmas holidays of 1889, renamed it Claremont Hall (later Sumner Hall), and began classes in January 1890. The college and the city have been inseparable ever since.

Frank Wheeler and the Making of Foothill Boulevard

The physical Route 66 through Claremont owes its character to a single individual: Frank Wheeler, an Englishman who arrived in Claremont in 1893 and devoted decades of effort to transforming the dirt track north of the railroad into a proper highway. Wheeler served as vice president of the Foothill Boulevard Association and campaigned persistently to have the road recognized and funded as a state highway. Working with landscape architect Ralph Cornell, Wheeler designed the layout of the eucalyptus trees that lined the highway through Claremont — a planting that gave the road its distinctive character and that contributed to Claremont’s future identity as the “City of Trees.”

Wheeler’s campaign succeeded. The dirt track became the National Old Trails Highway — the cross-country route linking Los Angeles and New York that preceded Route 66. When U.S. Route 66 was commissioned on November 11, 1926, it was aligned along this improved road. The Claremont section of the new highway was completed in 1931, and by 1938 the highway from Claremont east to San Bernardino had been widened and improved to become the first four-lane divided highway in California — a landmark achievement in the history of American highway engineering, centered on the Route 66 alignment through the San Gabriel Valley.

Incorporated 1907: The City of Trees

On September 23, 1907, the residents of Claremont voted 73 to 49 to incorporate as a city. The incorporation was officially recognized on October 3, 1907. Growth came through two parallel engines: the Claremont Colleges’ expansion and the creation of an early citrus cooperative whose marketing innovations would shape the entire California citrus industry. Claremont growers were among the first to organize a cooperative marketing system — a system that was adopted statewide and became known throughout the world as “Sunkist.” At its height, Claremont had between three and four thousand acres dedicated to lemon and orange cultivation, with four packing houses, an ice house, and a pre-cooling plant lining the Santa Fe Railroad tracks in the city.

The Claremont Colleges: Seven Institutions on Route 66

The Claremont Colleges Consortium is one of the most distinguished concentrations of higher education in the American West — seven highly selective institutions on contiguous campuses within walking distance of each other, south of Route 66’s Foothill Boulevard alignment. The consortium comprises Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College (the five undergraduate colleges) plus Claremont Graduate University and the Keck Graduate Institute. The colleges are consistently ranked among the top liberal arts institutions in the United States, and their combined endowments and scholarly reputations give Claremont a cultural and intellectual infrastructure that is exceptional for a city of its size.

Pomona College: The Seed from Which Claremont Grew

The oldest institution in the consortium is Pomona College — the one that saved Claremont from ghost-town status by occupying the empty Hotel Claremont in 1890. Founded in 1887 by Reverend Charles Burt Sumner along New England Congregational college lines, Pomona was designed from its inception to transplant the intellectual culture of Eastern higher education to Southern California. The 1939 WPA Guide described it: “POMONA COLLEGE was founded in Pomona in 1887 by the Reverend Charles B. Sumner, a New England Congregational minister. The following January the Santa Fe Railway gave 500 acres of land for a campus here; an unfinished hotel, now Sumner Hall, was the first college building.” The campus covers 140 acres and 63 buildings, with architecture spanning from the Victorian-era Sumner House (now a National Register property) to contemporary masterworks by distinguished architects.

In 1927, Pomona College became the sponsor of Claremont Colleges, Inc. — the consortium model that would grow to encompass seven institutions. The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, opened in 2021 in a 33,000-square-foot facility, is one of the most significant new museum openings in Southern California in recent decades, with a collection that includes works by notable alumni such as Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, Peter Shelton, and the late Chris Burden.

Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pitzer

The consortium’s other undergraduate colleges each bring distinct strengths and architectural characters. Harvey Mudd College — whose campus buildings were designed by Edward Durrell Stone, the same architect who designed the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington and the Kennedy Center — specializes in science, engineering, and mathematics and consistently ranks among the top producers of doctoral graduates per capita. Claremont McKenna College focuses on economics, government, and public affairs. Scripps College is a women’s liberal arts institution with one of the most beautiful campus environments in California — its Romanesque Revival buildings arranged around central gardens and designed in the 1920s and 1930s by architect Gordon Kaufmann. Pitzer College emphasizes social and behavioral sciences with an interdisciplinary approach. Together, the five undergraduate colleges create an intellectual environment that gives Claremont its distinctive combination of academic rigor and village-scale community life.

Millard Sheets and the Claremont Art Scene

The Claremont Colleges’ influence on American art is direct and substantial. Since the 1930s, Claremont has been a magnet and haven for artists, centered on the Claremont Colleges and particularly on Scripps College, which hosted the influential artist and designer Millard Sheets (1907–1989). Sheets became one of the most nationally recognized artist-designers in mid-century America, and his design studio on 655 East Foothill Boulevard — identifiable by the mosaic birds on its south wall — is a direct Route 66 landmark that travelers can see from the highway. Sheets’s mosaic murals can also be found at the Pomona First Federal building (now U.S. Bank) at Foothill and Indian Hill boulevards, adjacent to the Route 66 alignment. The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, located in the historic Claremont Depot building, celebrates the community’s artistic legacy.

Route 66 Landmarks Along Foothill Boulevard in Claremont

Wolfe’s Market: A Route 66 Institution Since 1917

At 160 West Foothill Boulevard — on the southeast corner of Harvard Avenue and Foothill Boulevard — Wolfe’s Marketplace has been serving the Claremont community and Route 66 travelers since 1917. The California Historic Route 66 Association records that Wolfe’s has been in its current location since 1935 and is operated today by the fourth generation of the Wolfe family. Route66mc.com notes that Claremont received “the highest rating of any California town” — a distinction associated in part with the quality of establishments like Wolfe’s Market, which is described as “not a supermarket, it’s a Super Market” — a small, upscale market with first-rate produce and meats. Today, Wolfe’s operates as a specialized deli, gourmet kitchen, and catering business, with The Meat Cellar occupying the majority of the original market’s footprint.

Wolfe’s Market is one of the oldest continuously operating businesses on the Route 66 alignment in California, and one of the few that has remained in the same family through the entire century since its founding. The building at 160 West Foothill has been at the corner of Harvard and Foothill since 1935 — visible in photographs from every era of the highway’s history. The Claremont Courier reported that a “Memories of Claremont” mural by Jeff Faust was commissioned for Wolfe’s Market, documenting the intersection’s history in visual form.

The Old School House: From High School to Route 66 Cultural Venue

At the intersection of Indian Hill Boulevard and Foothill Boulevard — the heart of Claremont’s Route 66 commercial corridor — the Old School House stands as one of the most significant adaptive-reuse stories on the California Mother Road. Originally Claremont High School, the building opened its doors on September 2, 1911 to a student body of 120 students. After the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, the structure was extensively remodeled — its third story removed for fear of collapse. When it still failed to meet earthquake standards for public schools, the district sold it in 1971. The building was then repurposed as a complex of restaurants, shops, and offices — a use that preserved its historic character while giving it new commercial life on the Route 66 corridor.

The Old School House’s former gymnasium became the home of the Candlelight Pavilion dinner theater, established in 1985 — a Broadway musical and cabaret venue that has operated in the original gymnasium space for four decades, making the Old School House building one of the most successfully adapted historic structures on the Route 66 alignment in Southern California. Directly across Foothill Boulevard from the Old School House was once an Orange Julius stand, remembered by Route 66 travelers and Claremont residents alike as a favorite refreshment stop on the highway.

Griswold’s: From Dried Fruit to Famous Smorgasbord

The Route 66 landmark with the longest and most colorful story arc in Claremont is the business founded by George Griswold — a retired professor who established an extensive dried fruit and marmalade business at 222 West Foothill Boulevard that became one of the most popular stops for Route 66 travelers in the San Gabriel Valley. Griswold’s stone cellar building at this address was “a regular stop for travelers on Route 66”, as Claremont Heritage documents.

The business grew beyond the original stone building: Griswold moved it across Foothill Boulevard and westward, expanded it with a bakery and restaurant, then built a smorgasbord restaurant complex and a 106-room Griswold’s Inn hotel — eventually the “Claremont Inn” — at a larger property nearby. The smorgasbord format (a Scandinavian buffet with multiple hot and cold dishes) was a Route 66 dining novelty that made Griswold’s a destination for travelers rather than merely a convenience stop. In 1968, Griswold’s became the first establishment in Claremont to sell alcohol — a significant milestone in a city that had long been “dry.” In 1970, Griswold’s purchased the Old Claremont High School and repurposed it as a retail mall; in 1985, the Candlelight Pavilion dinner theater was opened in the former gymnasium. The Griswold’s Inn complex eventually became Buca di Beppo and the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton Claremont after the family filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992 following the recession and the First Gulf War. The original stone cellar building at 222 West Foothill Boulevard survives.

The Millard Sheets Studio: Art on the Route 66 Corridor

At 655 East Foothill Boulevard, a distinctive building features a wall of mosaic birds on its south face — the former design studio of Millard Sheets, who taught at Scripps College and became one of the most prolific and celebrated artist-designers in Southern California’s mid-century history. Sheets’s buildings and murals appear across Southern California — his mosaic murals for bank buildings, hospitals, and public institutions were among the most widely seen public art of their era. The Route 66 traveler who passes 655 East Foothill Boulevard and notices the birds on the wall is glimpsing a direct piece of one of the most significant mid-century California art legacies.

The Sterling Oil Spray Building: A Citrus Industry Landmark

A stone building with a red tile roof on Foothill Boulevard was built to house the Sterling Oil Spray Company, which serviced the citrus industry with pesticide and spray equipment during the height of the orange and lemon growing era. The building later became a garage and now houses a florist shop. Claremont Heritage describes it as “a unique anchor at a key corner in Claremont…a reminder of the rocky soil encountered and conquered by the early citrus ranchers.” The building’s stone construction, unusual for commercial structures of its era, gives it a permanence and visual weight that makes it one of the more distinctive survivors of the citrus-era commercial landscape on the Route 66 alignment.

The Claremont Depot: A National Register Landmark at the City’s Heart

A short distance south of Foothill Boulevard’s Route 66 alignment, at 200 West First Street, the Claremont Depot is one of the most architecturally distinguished railroad stations in Southern California and a National Register of Historic Places landmark. Built in 1927 — one year after Route 66 was commissioned — the depot replaced the original 1887 Gothic-style station with a Spanish Colonial Revival masterpiece: thick stucco walls, wood-grille windows, a red tile roof, and Moorish arches that draw on the same architectural vocabulary as the Fox Theater in Pomona and the Aztec Hotel in Monrovia. The station’s most distinctive feature is its majestic doors and transom — brass-fitted entryways commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad with a design incorporating the railway’s cross-and-circle logo.

The Claremont Depot serves today as the Claremont Metrolink station — bringing Metrolink San Bernardino Line service to Claremont and making the city accessible by rail from downtown Los Angeles. The depot also houses the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, which uses the historic station building as gallery space for exhibitions celebrating the community’s artistic heritage. The combination of an active transit station, a museum, and one of the finest examples of Spanish Colonial Revival railroad architecture in California makes the Claremont Depot one of the most rewarding non-Foothill-Boulevard stops on any Route 66 visit to the city.

The College Heights Citrus Packing House: The Last Survivor

At 520 West First Street — adjacent to the Santa Fe/Metrolink rail corridor — the College Heights Lemon Packing House is the sole survivor of the four packing houses that once lined the railroad tracks in Claremont during the height of the citrus industry. Claremont Heritage’s guided village tour describes it: “This imposing building is the only one that remains of four packing houses that once lined the Santa Fe tracks in Claremont. It was here that the citrus fruit, which was the economic lifeline of this community, was washed, graded, stored, and shipped all over the United States and Europe, and eventually Japan.”

The building is a concrete, block, and wooden structure that served the College Heights Orange and Lemon Association — an organization formed in one of the earliest agricultural cooperatives in California, whose marketing methods were adopted statewide and became known internationally as “Sunkist.” Today, the packing house has been adaptively reused as the Claremont Packing House — a dining, shopping, and events destination featuring fine dining, boutiques, wine tastings, art classes, and art walks. Establishments including Packing House Wines, Gus’s BBQ, The Whisper House, and others occupy the historic structure. Claremont Heritage actively worked to save the building from demolition — writing letters and appearing at city hearings — making its preservation a community achievement.

The California Botanic Garden: 86 Acres of Native Plants Near Route 66

A short distance north of Foothill Boulevard via College Avenue, the California Botanic Garden (formerly the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden) is an 86-acre botanical garden devoted to studying and preserving California native plants. The garden moved to Claremont from Santa Ana in the early 1950s to affiliate with the Claremont Colleges, and it now maintains around 2,000 taxa of local plants from Baja California to Oregon — one of the most comprehensive collections of California native flora in the world.

The garden is open to the public and offers educational programs for adults and children, as well as summer concerts and plant sales that draw visitors from across the region. Explore Southern California’s Route 66 walking account notes that the garden affords “some of the best views of Mt. San Antonio” — the 10,060-foot peak known locally as Mount Baldy that towers over the foothill communities of the San Gabriel Valley and is visible from Foothill Boulevard on clear days. The California Botanic Garden is also distinguished for having one of the few surviving populations of elm trees in North America unaffected by Dutch elm disease — a horticultural phenomenon that connects Claremont’s identity as the “City of Trees” to genuine botanical science.

Practical Information for Your Claremont Route 66 Visit

Getting to Claremont

From the East (from Upland/San Bernardino): Follow Foothill Boulevard west from Upland. Route 66 enters Claremont from the east without a street name change.

From the West (from Pomona): Follow Foothill Boulevard east from Pomona. The Route 66 alignment enters Claremont from the west at approximately Towne Avenue.

From Interstate 10: Take the Indian Hill Boulevard exit north to Foothill Boulevard. Indian Hill Boulevard is the key cross-street for most of Claremont’s Route 66 landmarks.

From State Route 210 (Foothill Freeway): Take the Indian Hill Boulevard or Towne Avenue exit south to Foothill Boulevard.

By Metrolink: The Claremont station on the San Bernardino Line is at 200 West First Street — the historic Claremont Depot — and provides direct rail access from downtown Los Angeles (Union Station). This is one of the best Metrolink-accessible Route 66 communities in the Inland Empire, and the combination of rail access with a walkable village makes a car-free visit viable.

Claremont Heritage Route 66 Tour

Claremont Heritage offers a self-guided Historic Route 66 Tour of Foothill Boulevard landmarks, as well as guided walking tours of the Claremont Village. Contact: (909) 621-0848 or [email protected]. Location: Historic Garner House at Memorial Park, 840 North Indian Hill Boulevard. Hours: Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Guided walking tours begin at the Claremont Depot at 200 West First Street at 10:00 a.m. (reservation recommended; fee applies; rain may cancel).

Time Required

A thorough Claremont Route 66 visit — Foothill Boulevard driving and walking tour (Wolfe’s Market, Old School House, Griswold’s stone building, Millard Sheets Studio, Sterling Oil Spray building), the Claremont Depot, the Claremont Packing House, the California Botanic Garden, and a walk through the Claremont Village — requires a comfortable full day. The California Botanic Garden alone deserves 1–2 hours. The Claremont Village is one of the most walkable and enjoyable historic downtowns on the entire California Route 66 corridor.

Dining Near Route 66 in Claremont

The Claremont Village and Claremont Packing House offer the widest variety of dining options for Route 66 travelers. Wolfe’s Marketplace at 160 West Foothill Boulevard provides gourmet deli and specialty food items for picnics in the California Botanic Garden or on the college campuses. The Claremont Village on Indian Hill Boulevard south of the railroad tracks — walkable from the Metrolink station — has restaurants ranging from Mediterranean to Italian to Asian cuisine, making Claremont one of the more rewarding dining stops on the California Mother Road.

Climate

Claremont has a warm Mediterranean climate, with an average of 288 sunny days per year. The city sits at an elevation of approximately 1,168 feet — higher than many neighboring Inland Empire communities — which moderates temperatures slightly. Summer averages reach the high 80s to low 90s°F; winter averages are mild. The Santa Ana winds blow hot and dry in autumn. Early summer “June Gloom” from the marine layer is common. Spring (March–May) is the most beautiful season, when the California Botanic Garden’s native plants are in bloom and the mountain views from Foothill Boulevard are at their most dramatic.

Nearby Route 66 Highlights in the San Gabriel Valley

Route 66 in Pomona, California — Immediately east on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard), Pomona — the “Queen of the Citrus Belt” — holds the second-shortest Route 66 alignment of any city on the entire highway (just 1.1 miles), and its nearby attractions include the Fairplex/LA County Fair (since 1922), the 1931 Fox Theater (National Register), the NHRA Winternationals dragstrip, the Primera Casa Adobe (1837), and the Pomona Arts Colony.

Route 66 in La Verne, California — About 5 miles west on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard), La Verne — the “Heart of the Orange Empire” — is home to Old Town La Verne (the original Lordsburg), the University of La Verne (founded in 1891 in a bankrupt hotel), Heritage Park’s surviving orange groves, and the famous 1967 Graduate church filming location.

Aztec Hotel, Monrovia — About 20 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 the entire California Mother Road.

Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga, California — About 15 miles east on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard), the city with the 1915 Cucamonga Service Station Route 66 Museum (National Register), California’s oldest winery (Thomas Winery, est. 1839), the Sycamore Inn (since 1848), and the Magic Lamp Inn.

Route 66 in Pasadena, California — About 15 miles west on Route 66 (Colorado Boulevard), Pasadena’s celebrated 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 Glendora, California — About 12 miles east on Route 66, the city that officially renamed its Route 66 street after the highway is home to the Frank Chance Baseball Hall of Fame Building (1912), Rubel Castle (National Register), and the Golden Spur neon legacy.

Route 66 in California — Complete Guide — The full overview of all 314 miles of California’s Route 66 from Needles through the Inland Empire, San Gabriel Valley, Claremont, 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. Claremont — where the eucalyptus trees planted by Frank Wheeler and Ralph Cornell still line Foothill Boulevard, and where surviving Route 66-era buildings connect the present city to the Mother Road’s golden years — is one of the most thoughtful and historically resonant stops on the California Centennial corridor.

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.