Born the Year Elvis Sang and Route 66 Rolled On: Montclair on the Mother Road
There is a particular kind of Route 66 city that is less celebrated than the famous stopping points — the cities without a single iconic landmark that travelers specifically plan to visit, but that are deeply embedded in the texture of the highway’s California corridor, shaped by exactly the same forces that created every community along the road. Montclair, California is that kind of city. Incorporated in 1956 — the same year that Route 66 was carrying a postwar America in love with its cars and its open roads — Montclair was a city that came into being during the Mother Road’s golden era, rather than one that adapted to the highway over decades. Its residents voted for incorporation specifically to control their own destiny against the annexation pressures of neighboring Ontario, which had its own growth ambitions. That civic independence story, compressed into a vote count of 682 to 455 in the early hours of an April 1956 morning, is as Route 66 American as the highway itself.
Montclair sits in the Pomona Valley of southwestern San Bernardino County, approximately 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, bordered by Pomona to the west, Claremont and Upland to the north, Ontario to the east, and Chino to the south. Route 66 runs along Foothill Boulevard through the northern edge of the city — the same alignment that carries the Mother Road through the entire San Bernardino County portion of the California corridor. Montclair’s Route 66 story is the story of the Inland Empire’s transformation from citrus orchards to citrus-grove-named subdivisions to the postwar suburban communities that the highway sustained and that sustained the highway in its most commercially active years.
The city’s Route 66 landmarks include the Mission Tiki Drive-In — a four-screen drive-in theater that operated from 1956 to 2023 as one of the most beloved drive-in theaters in Southern California, its Tiki-themed makeover of 2006 giving it a distinctive second act before the land was sold for industrial development. The Montclair Transcenter is one of the most significant transit hubs on the Route 66 corridor in the Inland Empire. And the city’s history — from its Township of Marquette origins in 1897 through its citrus orchard era to its postwar suburban growth — is a compressed version of the larger story that Route 66 communities tell about 20th-century American mobility and place-making.
Where Does Route 66 Run Through Montclair?
Route 66 runs along Foothill Boulevard through the northern portion of Montclair from east to west, entering the city from Claremont to the west (at the Claremont–Montclair city line) and continuing east toward Upland. Foothill Boulevard forms the city’s northern boundary through much of this stretch — with Claremont and Upland immediately to the north — making Montclair’s Route 66 alignment one where the highway runs along the city’s edge rather than through its residential or commercial core.
From Interstate 10 (San Bernardino Freeway): Take Central Avenue or Monte Vista Avenue north to Foothill Boulevard. Interstate 10 runs through the southern portion of Montclair, making the city’s northern (Route 66) and southern (I-10) boundaries two of the most significant transportation corridors in the Inland Empire. From State Route 210 (Foothill Freeway): Take the Monte Vista Avenue or Towne Avenue exit south to Foothill Boulevard. The Montclair Transcenter — the city’s major multimodal transit hub — is located at 5091 Richton Street, just north of Montclair Place mall and accessible from Foothill Boulevard, providing Metrolink, Foothill Transit, Omnitrans, and Silver Streak connections.
Montclair’s History: From Marquette to Narod to Monte Vista to Montclair
Indigenous Peoples and the Mission Era
The land that became Montclair was occupied by the Serrano people — whose name, given by Spanish missionaries, means “mountaineer” — for generations before European contact, as part of the broader Tongva/Gabrielino cultural territory of the San Gabriel Valley and the San Bernardino foothills. The Montclair Historic Context Report prepared for the city documents the Serrano presence as part of the area’s earliest human history. The Spanish reached this region through the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel (founded 1771) — one of the most productive missions in California, with agricultural holdings that stretched through the San Bernardino Valley. The Rancho Cucamonga land to the east was granted to Tiburtio Tapia in 1839.
The route that would become Foothill Boulevard — and eventually Route 66 — has deep historical roots in this region: American explorer Jedediah Smith passed through what is now the Montclair/Upland area in 1826 on the first known overland journey from the eastern United States to the Pacific coast. Smith’s route followed Native American trails that later became the California Trail and ultimately the National Old Trails Highway — the direct precursor to Route 66. The monument to Smith’s journey is at Foothill Boulevard and Euclid Avenue in nearby Upland, marking the route that Montclair’s Foothill Boulevard continues.
The Ontario Colony: Chaffey Brothers and the Irrigation Colonies (1882)
The agricultural development that shaped what would become Montclair was driven by one of the most consequential infrastructure projects in Southern California’s history: the Ontario Model Colony, established in 1882 by the Canadian engineer brothers George Chaffey (1848–1932) and William Chaffey (1856–1926). The Chaffeys purchased land from the Rancho Cucamonga, acquired water rights from Mount San Antonio (Mount Baldy), and engineered an irrigation system using cement pipes — a new concept — to channel mountain water through the alluvial fan down to the citrus orchards they planned to establish.
The Chaffeys named their settlement “Ontario” after their home province in Canada, and they designed Euclid Avenue as the community’s main thoroughfare — with its distinctive wide lanes, grassy median, and tree-lined character that still defines it today as a California State Highway (SR 83). The Chaffeys also founded the institution that is now Chaffey College, established as the Chaffey College of Agriculture in Ontario in 1883 through a donation of land and endowment — an institution that today serves students from Chino, Chino Hills, Fontana, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland, cementing the geographic community that the Chaffeys’ irrigation colonies created.
The water infrastructure the Chaffeys created — channeling water from the San Antonio Canyon above Claremont and Upland through the alluvial fans — was what made citrus cultivation in the area that became Montclair viable. The San Antonio Water Company, incorporated in October 1882, served what is today Ontario, Upland, San Antonio Heights, and to a lesser extent Montclair. Without the Chaffeys’ engineering, the land that would become Montclair would have remained the open grazing land that the Montclair Historic Context Report describes it as through the 1890s.
Marquette, Narod, and Monte Vista: The Pre-Incorporation Era (1897–1956)
The first formal township within the borders of the modern city of Montclair was “Marquette” — established in 1897 by a developer named Edward Fraser. A Los Angeles Times article from 1887 had already noted that Fraser was building a fine residence, store buildings, hotel, and livery stable, with an abundant supply of pure water piped through the streets, and was arranging weekend train excursions from Los Angeles at $2 for a roundtrip to attract land buyers. The Montclair Historic Context Report notes that the advertisement described the location as “forty miles out from Los Angeles, lying between two lines of transcontinental” railroad — a position between the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe routes that characterized the entire San Gabriel Valley corridor that would become Route 66.
In 1900, a 1,000-acre tract was surveyed and named “Monte Vista” — a name reflecting the mountain views that dominate the landscape north toward the San Gabriel Mountains. In 1907, land speculator Emil Firth purchased the 1,000 acres for a reported $250,000 (equivalent to approximately $5.6 million today) and subdivided them into five- and ten-acre lots for orchards and residential development. The same year, a small settlement to the south of Monte Vista was established and named “Narod” — a name of uncertain origin — which had a large packing house and a church, and shared the citrus orchard culture representative of the Pomona Valley.
One of the earliest agricultural developments in the specific area of Montclair was the Reeder Citrus Ranch, whose property at 4405 Holt Boulevard was purchased in 1900 by John C. Reeder. The Reeder Ranch name has been preserved by the Reeder Heritage Foundation, which has maintained historical documentation of the Montclair area’s citrus era.
Through the first half of the 20th century, the Monte Vista/Narod/Marquette area remained primarily devoted to citrus orchards — lemon and orange groves stretching across the flat terrain of the Ontario Colony’s alluvial fan, irrigated by the water infrastructure the Chaffeys had built and sustained by the marketing cooperatives that the broader citrus industry developed. Route 66 was commissioned along Foothill Boulevard in 1926, running along the northern boundary of this agricultural landscape. The highway’s travelers in the late 1920s and 1930s would have driven through or past citrus groves on both sides of Foothill Boulevard in what would become Montclair — a landscape that the 1939 WPA Guide described in general terms as “billowing foothills past miles of citrus groves and vineyards.” By 1960, virtually none of the citrus groves remained in what had become Montclair — the postwar residential development had been complete.
Incorporation as Monte Vista, Renamed Montclair: 1956–1958
The postwar population and housing boom in the Monte Vista/Narod area transformed the citrus landscape with remarkable speed. Returning veterans and their growing families sought suburban homes in communities with good schools, clean air, and easy access to Los Angeles. Interstate 10’s completion in the late 1950s made the Inland Empire viable as a commuter suburb of Los Angeles, and the Monte Vista tract experienced a surge in residential development that set the stage for incorporation.
The immediate trigger for incorporating as a city was the threat of annexation by Ontario. The City of Ontario, with its own growth ambitions, was expanding and the residents of Monte Vista feared losing control of their community’s destiny. Long-time residents formed the Monte Vista Improvement Association, which proposed city incorporation. The residents voted in April 1956: incorporation was approved 682 to 455, and the people of the new city elected their first City Council. The five councilmembers were James West (482 votes), Paul Frame (421), Miller Buchanan (404), Glen Wolf (386), and Dana Pankey, Jr. (355). The City of Monte Vista was officially incorporated on April 25, 1956, with a total population of 8,008 spread over 4.2 square miles.
The first City Council meeting was held on May 8, 1956, in a former butcher shop at 5326 San Bernardino Street. The mayor brought the table and chairs from his own home; Stone’s Mortuary provided the folding chairs and the U.S. flag. The infant city’s government made rapid advances in its first year: street lighting plans, zoning ordinances, street sweeping contracts, engineering data collection, and a recreation program.
The name “Monte Vista” lasted only two years. The U.S. Post Office refused to open a post office in Monte Vista because a community in Northern California already had that name, creating potential mail confusion. The city’s residents voted on a new name and chose “Montclair” — the city was officially renamed on April 8, 1958. The name Montclair evoked the same mountain-view character as Monte Vista (the French “mont” meaning “mountain” or “hill” and “clair” meaning “clear” or “bright”), while providing the postal uniqueness the Post Office required.
The Mission Tiki Drive-In: Route 66’s Most Beloved Drive-In Theater (1956–2023)
The Route 66 landmark that defined Montclair for generations of Inland Empire residents — and that disappeared from the landscape just as this article’s subject city was preparing to celebrate the Route 66 Centennial — was the Mission Tiki Drive-In Theater, which operated at 10798 Ramona Avenue, Montclair from its opening in 1956 until its final screenings on January 22, 2023. The theater operated for precisely 67 years — Cinema Treasures noted this may have been an L.A. area record, surpassing the Orange Drive-In (closed 1994 after 53 years) and the Hi-Way 39 (closed 1997 after 42 years).
From “The Mission” to the Mission Tiki: A Drive-In’s Two Lives
The theater opened in 1956 as “The Mission” — named for its location on Mission Boulevard in Montclair. This was the same year Montclair itself was incorporated as a city, making the Mission Drive-In and the City of Montclair exact contemporaries: both born in the Route 66 golden era of 1956, when American drive-in culture was at or near its peak. By the mid-1950s, drive-in theaters nationwide had numbered well over 4,000 — an extraordinary figure that reflected the postwar American love affair with the automobile and the open sky that Route 66 represented in its most essential form.
The Mission Drive-In expanded to four screens in 1975 and could accommodate approximately 1,450 cars at its largest. In 2006, the theater was refurbished and given a Tiki makeover that transformed it into the Mission Tiki Drive-In — updating it with FM transmission for in-car sound, digital projection, and the tropical Polynesian aesthetic of the Tiki revival that was enjoying renewed popularity in Southern California. The Tiki theme — with its bamboo motifs, tropical imagery, and mid-century Polynesian Pop aesthetic — was an inspired choice for a Route 66-era drive-in seeking to attract a new generation of customers while honoring the mid-century Americana that the Mother Road embodied.
The Mission Tiki developed a passionate following and operated year-round, 365 days a year, showing first-run films in double features. It also hosted a famous swap meet that drew vendors and shoppers from across Southern California every Wednesday through Sunday — a tradition that had been running since the 1960s and made the Mission Tiki site a Route 66-era community marketplace as much as an entertainment venue.
The End: January 2023
In late 2019, the owner of the Mission Tiki Drive-In sold the land on which the theater sat. An announcement was made that the drive-in would close permanently at the end of 2019, though the closure was ultimately delayed as plans shifted. The theater’s final screenings were on January 22, 2023, with Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto, Plane, and M3GAN on the three active screens. The swap meet closed on January 30, 2023. By May 2023, the site had been demolished — aerial photographs showed the ramps bulldozed to dirt and the concession building being dismantled. The property is being redeveloped as the Mission and Ramona Business Park — a mix of industrial buildings and warehouses that reflects the Inland Empire’s contemporary economic character as a hub of warehouse and logistics development.
The Mission Tiki’s closure drew widespread mourning from Southern California drive-in enthusiasts and Route 66 travelers. Cinema Treasures documented the outpouring, with one commenter noting that “67 years has to be an L.A. area record.” The theater’s combination of Route 66 heritage, mid-century drive-in culture, Tiki aesthetic, and the beloved community swap meet made it one of the more comprehensive expressions of postwar American roadside culture anywhere on California’s corridor of the Mother Road.
Montclair Place: From Plaza to Landmark Retail Hub
South of Foothill Boulevard on the Route 66 alignment, Montclair Place (formerly Montclair Plaza until 2015) is a 1.2-million-square-foot indoor shopping mall at 2200 Montclair Plaza Lane that has served as a major regional retail anchor since its opening on November 5, 1968 at a cost of $50 million. The mall expanded with a second level in 1985 and added Sears the same year. The first Nordstrom store in San Bernardino County opened at Montclair Plaza on May 2, 1986 — a milestone in the county’s retail development.
The Pomona Valley Historical Collection at Cal Poly Pomona notes that the mall’s popularity in its early decades “continually drew commerce east, away from the city of Pomona” — one of the most concrete examples of how a single retail anchor can reshape regional economic geography. The Cal Poly documentation also notes that when Victoria Gardens — an open-air mall in Rancho Cucamonga — opened further east, Montclair Plaza’s own popularity declined, prompting remodel work in 2008 and the rebranding as Montclair Place in 2015. Today, the mall features JCPenney, Macy’s, an AMC DINE-IN Theatre, and over 100 specialty stores. The adjacent Montclair Transcenter two city blocks north at 5091 Richton Street provides transit connections that make the mall accessible by public transportation.
The Montclair Transcenter: A Route 66 Transit Hub for the Modern Inland Empire
One of the most significant transit facilities along the Route 66 corridor in the Inland Empire is the Montclair Transcenter — an intermodal bus and rail hub at 5091 Richton Street, just north of Montclair Place, accessible from Foothill Boulevard. The Transcenter provides connections for:
Metrolink: The San Bernardino Line, providing service from downtown Los Angeles (Union Station) east to San Bernardino, with Montclair as a key intermediate stop on the route that also serves Claremont and Pomona.
Foothill Transit: The regional bus service connecting communities across the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire along and adjacent to the Route 66 corridor.
Omnitrans: The San Bernardino County transit authority providing local and regional bus service throughout the Inland Empire, including connections to Ontario, Upland, and San Bernardino.
Silver Streak Bus Rapid Transit: The express bus rapid transit line serving the city and connecting to the broader transit network, with a stop at the Transcenter and at Montclair Place mall.
The Transcenter makes Montclair one of the better-connected communities for car-free Route 66 travelers along this section of the Mother Road. For Route 66 enthusiasts traveling by rail and transit rather than by car — a growing approach to experiencing the highway’s communities — Montclair’s transit hub provides connections to Claremont and Pomona to the west and Upland and Rancho Cucamonga to the east, allowing exploration of the Inland Empire’s Route 66 corridor without a vehicle.
Montclair’s Route 66 Corridor: Understanding the Inland Empire’s Character
For Route 66 travelers approaching Montclair from either direction on Foothill Boulevard, understanding the city’s character in context of the broader corridor is essential. Montclair exemplifies what Route 66 historian Jack DeVere Rittenhouse captured in his 1946 account of this stretch of the highway: the towns along Foothill Boulevard through the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire are “so close together as to be practically indistinguishable from each other.” The community boundaries — Claremont to the west, Montclair in the middle, Upland to the east — are meaningful in administrative terms but are invisible on the ground. The Route 66 experience through this section of the corridor is fundamentally continuous.
What Montclair adds to the corridor is the specific character of a postwar suburban community that grew up simultaneously with Route 66’s most commercially active years. The city’s residential neighborhoods — mostly modest one-story Ranch and Mid-Century Modern tract houses that the Montclair Historic Context Report describes as representative of how developers pared down popular architectural trends for the average middle-income consumer — are the built environment that the Mother Road’s golden era produced. The people who lived in these houses drove Foothill Boulevard to fill their tanks, eat at the drive-in, shop at the growing commercial strip, and access the wider world that Route 66 connected.
Montclair also holds a specific industrial legacy dimension through its eastern border with Ontario and its position in the Ontario International Airport catchment area — the airport (approximately 3 miles east) is a significant economic engine for the entire western Inland Empire and makes Montclair an accessible destination for Route 66 travelers arriving by air rather than road. The airport’s Inland Empire location, midway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino on the Route 66 corridor, makes it an underutilized gateway for fly-drive Route 66 expeditions.
Practical Information for Your Montclair Route 66 Visit
Getting to Montclair
From the West (from Claremont/Pomona): Follow Foothill Boulevard east from Claremont into Montclair. The city boundary is crossed without any major landmark change on Foothill Boulevard itself.
From the East (from Upland/Rancho Cucamonga): Follow Foothill Boulevard west from Upland into Montclair.
From Interstate 10: Take Central Avenue or Monte Vista Avenue north to Foothill Boulevard, or the Montclair Transcenter for transit connections.
From State Route 210 (Foothill Freeway): Take Monte Vista Avenue or Towne Avenue south to Foothill Boulevard.
From Ontario International Airport (ONT): The airport is approximately 3 miles east. Omnitrans provides bus service from the airport area to the Montclair Transcenter.
By Metrolink: The Montclair station on the San Bernardino Line at the Montclair Transcenter (5091 Richton Street) provides rail access from downtown Los Angeles (Union Station), with connections to Claremont, Pomona, and points east to San Bernardino. This is one of the most transit-accessible Route 66 communities in the Inland Empire.
The Mission Tiki Drive-In Site
The Mission Tiki Drive-In at 10798 Ramona Avenue closed permanently on January 22, 2023, and the site was demolished by May 2023 for industrial redevelopment. The site is no longer accessible as a landmark. Route 66 travelers interested in the drive-in theater tradition can visit Van Buren Drive-In and Swap Meet in Riverside — the operator recommended by the Mission Tiki upon its closure.
Montclair Place Mall
Montclair Place at 2200 Montclair Plaza Lane (near Central Avenue and I-10) is open for shopping, dining, and entertainment. AMC DINE-IN Theatre is on site. The mall is directly served by the Silver Streak bus rapid transit and Foothill Transit and Omnitrans buses, with transit connections at the Montclair Transcenter two blocks north.
Climate
Montclair has a warm Continental Mediterranean climate — hot and dry summers with cool winters. Summer temperatures regularly reach the high 80s to mid-90s°F. The city experiences the Santa Ana winds in autumn and the early summer “June Gloom” marine layer that affects much of the Inland Empire. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) offer the most comfortable conditions for exploring the Route 66 corridor on foot or by bicycle.
Ontario International Airport Access
Ontario International Airport (ONT) is approximately 3 miles east of Montclair’s city center, making it one of the most convenient fly-drive Route 66 departure/arrival points on the California corridor. The airport provides domestic service and is served by major carriers. Rental cars are available at the airport for Route 66 road trips in either direction. The airport’s Inland Empire location places it equidistant between the eastern and western Route 66 highlights of California’s corridor.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights in the Inland Empire
Route 66 in Claremont, California — Immediately west on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard), Claremont — the “Ivy League of the West” and “City of Trees” — is one of the most historically and architecturally distinguished Route 66 communities in California. Wolfe’s Market (1917), the Old School House (1911), Griswold’s legendary smorgasbord site, the Claremont Colleges consortium, the California Botanic Garden, and the National Register Claremont Depot await just minutes from the Montclair city line.
Route 66 in Pomona, California — About 5 miles west on Route 66, Pomona — the “Queen of the Citrus Belt” — holds the second-shortest Route 66 alignment of any city on the entire highway. Its nearby Fairplex/LA County Fair (since 1922), the 1931 Fox Theater (National Register), the NHRA Winternationals, and the Primera Casa Adobe (1837) make it a destination in itself.
Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga, California — About 5 miles east on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard through Upland), the city with the 1915 Cucamonga Service Station Route 66 Museum (National Register, 2018 Governor’s Preservation Award), California’s oldest winery (Thomas Winery, est. 1839), the Sycamore Inn (since 1848), and the Magic Lamp Inn neon.
Aztec Hotel, Monrovia — About 25 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 La Verne, California — About 10 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 1891 in a bankrupt hotel), Heritage Park’s surviving orange groves, and the Carrión Adobe (1868).
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, 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. Montclair — a city born in 1956 at the height of the Mother Road’s golden era — has a unique relationship with Route 66 as a community that grew up on the highway rather than pre-existing it. 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.
