The Shortest Grand Entrance: Route 66 Through the Queen of the Citrus Belt
Among all the cities, towns, and communities along U.S. Route 66‘s 2,448-mile run from Chicago to Santa Monica, very few hold a distinction as specific and surprising as Pomona, California’s: the city that was once known as the “Queen of the Citrus Belt” — one of the wealthiest cities per capita in America in the 1920s — holds the second-shortest Route 66 alignment of any city on the entire highway. Pomona’s section of Route 66 along Foothill Boulevard measures just 1.1 miles — a stretch so brief that travelers driving the Mother Road can pass through the northern edge of this historically significant Southern California city in under three minutes without realizing they were ever in it. The shortest alignment of any city on Route 66 belongs to Irwindale, California, at 0.9 miles; Pomona claims second place. Third is Berwyn, Illinois, at 1.5 miles.
But brevity of highway alignment is no measure of historical depth. Pomona’s 1.1 miles on Foothill Boulevard is the tip of an iceberg whose submerged mass includes: a 15,000-acre Mexican land grant from 1837 with two surviving adobes; the Fairplex — the 543-acre home of the Los Angeles County Fair since 1922, which served as a Japanese-American internment assembly center and a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II before returning to its role as one of the nation’s largest county fairs; the Fox Theater Pomona, a 1931 Art Deco landmark restored to a 2,000-seat live music venue; the NHRA Winternationals dragstrip on the Fairplex grounds; and a downtown Arts Colony that has made Pomona one of the more creatively active small cities in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Route 66 grazes the northern edge of all of this. The smart traveler stops, turns south, and explores.
Where Does Route 66 Run Through Pomona?
Route 66 runs along Foothill Boulevard through the extreme northern edge of Pomona — a strip so narrow that for part of its length, the north side of Foothill Boulevard is technically in neighboring La Verne while the south side is in Pomona. The city’s Route 66 alignment runs from approximately Garey Avenue on the east to Williams Avenue / Falcon Street on the west, a total distance of 1.1 miles. West of Falcon Street, the alignment continues into La Verne. East of Garey Avenue, it continues through Claremont.
The key insight for Route 66 travelers is that most of what makes Pomona worth visiting is south of Foothill Boulevard — a 4-mile detour south into the downtown core — rather than on the Route 66 alignment itself. The Fairplex/LA County Fair grounds, the Fox Theater, the downtown Arts Colony, the Primera Casa Adobe, the Palomares Adobe, and the NHRA dragstrip are all accessed from downtown Pomona rather than from Foothill Boulevard directly.
From State Route 57 (Orange Freeway): Take the Foothill Boulevard exit and head east or west along the Route 66 alignment, or continue south on Route 57 into downtown Pomona for the major landmarks. From Interstate 10: Take Garey Avenue or White Avenue north to access downtown Pomona and the Fairplex. From State Route 210 (Foothill Freeway): Take the Garey Avenue or Towne Avenue exit and follow south into the city. The Pomona North Metrolink station on the San Bernardino Line provides rail access from downtown Los Angeles.
Pomona’s History: From Rancho San José to the Queen of the Citrus Belt
The Name: Roman Goddess of Fruit
Pomona carries one of the most fitting names in Southern California — fitting because the region it was named for became defined by the exact thing the name honored. “Pomona” is the ancient Roman goddess of fruit and orchards, and the name was chosen in 1875 by horticulturist Solomon Gates, who won a naming contest held by the Los Angeles Immigration and Land Cooperative Association. Gates selected the name before a single fruit tree had been planted in the area — an act of prescient optimism that proved entirely justified. Within two decades, the Pomona Valley had become one of the premier citrus-producing regions in California, and the goddess of fruit’s name had become inseparable from the lemon and orange groves that surrounded the city on every side.
The Rancho San José and the Palomares Grant: 1837
The land where Pomona now stands was part of the Rancho San José — a 15,000-acre Mexican land grant awarded in 1837 to Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Véjar by Mexican Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. The Rancho San José was one of the most expansive private land grants in the region, encompassing what is now San Dimas, Azusa, Covina, Walnut, Glendora, La Verne, Claremont, and Pomona — a vast sweep of foothill terrain extending from the mountains to the valley floor.
Palomares had his ranch hands build his home from adobe bricks (sun-dried mud and straw) and named it “Primera Casa” — the “First House.” He lived there with his wife, Concepción López de Palomares, for 17 years before moving to a larger home built 1.2 miles to the northeast. That second home — the Ygnacio Palomares Adobe, built around 1850 — was located on the trade route linking San Bernardino with Los Angeles: the same general alignment that would eventually become the National Old Trails Highway and then Route 66 itself. The presence of a significant rancho structure on the proto-Route 66 corridor in the 1850s gives Pomona’s relationship with the highway one of the deepest historical backstories on California’s entire Mother Road.
Louis Phillips, the Railroad, and the Land Boom: 1864–1888
In 1864, the widow of Ygnacio Palomares sold 12,000 acres of the original rancho to Louis Phillips — a Jewish Prussian immigrant who became known as “the richest man in Los Angeles County.” Phillips’s success in the Pomona Valley was part of the larger story of the Southern California land boom of the 1880s, when competing railroads — the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe — drove land prices up and Midwestern settlers west. By the time Pomona was officially incorporated on January 6, 1888 (making it, as the California Historic Route 66 Association notes, one of the established communities in the area), the citrus industry that Solomon Gates had implicitly promised with his Roman goddess name was well underway.
Queen of the Citrus Belt: The 1920s Peak
By the 1920s, Pomona had achieved a distinction that is easy to overlook given the city’s more modest contemporary profile: it was home to one of the highest per-capita income levels in the United States. The Wikipedia account is direct: “In the 1920s Pomona was known as the ‘Queen of the Citrus Belt’, with one of the highest per-capita levels of income in the United States.” The citrus empire that the Pomona Valley sustained — lemon and orange groves extending across the alluvial fans of the San Gabriel Mountains — had made this a genuinely prosperous agricultural region, and the wealth of that prosperity was visible in the quality of Pomona’s buildings, streets, and civic life.
It was during this citrus-belt peak that Route 66 arrived — commissioned on November 11, 1926 along the National Old Trails Highway alignment on Foothill Boulevard. For travelers of the late 1920s and 1930s, passing through Pomona meant passing through the northern edge of a prosperous citrus empire, with the mountain peaks of the San Gabriel range visible to the north and the fragrant orange and lemon groves extending south toward the valley floor. The 1939 WPA Guide to the Golden State described the area around Pomona as being “in the midst of citrus groves and vineyards” — the landscape that Route 66 was helping to make famous as the destination that the Dust Bowl refugees and postwar vacationers were driving toward.
The 1940s: Film Previews and a City That Defined Middle-Class America
Pomona’s identity in the 1940s added an extraordinary dimension to its Route 66 story: the major Hollywood film studios used Pomona as a film-preview location — screening new releases to Pomona audiences to gauge how they would perform with “modally middle-class audiences around the country.” Pomona was selected for this because it was viewed as an idealized example of mainstream American middle-class life: suburban, prosperous, educated, and neither too cosmopolitan nor too rural. The studios’ assumption was that if a film played well in Pomona, it would play well everywhere. This practice made Pomona, briefly, one of the most culturally significant small cities in America — a test market for the nation’s cinematic taste, located directly on Route 66.
The Fairplex: Los Angeles County Fair, WWII History, and the NHRA
The most significant institution near Route 66 in Pomona is the Fairplex — a 543-acre complex that began in 1922 with a 43-acre donation from the City of Pomona and has grown into one of the largest county fair grounds in the United States, hosting the Los Angeles County Fair, the NHRA Winternationals, and dozens of other events throughout the year. The Fairplex is approximately 1.5 miles south of Foothill Boulevard / Route 66 at 1101 West McKinley Avenue — a short, logical detour from the highway for any Route 66 traveler with time to spare.
The LA County Fair: A Century of Tradition Near Route 66
The Los Angeles County Fair opened for the first time on October 17, 1922, drawing nearly 50,000 visitors over its five days. The California Historic Route 66 Association notes that the Great Depression temporarily reduced attendance, but also brought the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which helped construct multiple new buildings at Fairplex in 1937 — including the fine arts building designed by architect Claud Beelman that now houses the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The building was renamed in 1994 in honor of Millard Sheets, the Pomona native who directed the county fair’s art programs from 1930 to 1956. Today the LA County Fair is held in May, having shifted from its traditional September date, and remains one of the signature events of the Southern California calendar.
Fairplex During World War II: Internment, Troops, and Prisoners of War
The Fairplex’s World War II history is one of the most complex and sobering chapters in Pomona’s story — and one that Route 66 travelers interested in the full history of the highway’s communities should understand. When the United States government ordered the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast following Pearl Harbor, the Fairplex was converted into a Japanese-American assembly center. Construction of the Pomona Assembly Center began on March 21, 1942, and the camp officially opened on May 7, 1942, consisting of 309 barracks, 8 mess halls, and 36 shower and latrine facilities.
The first group of 72 Japanese-American citizens arrived on May 9, 1942. By May 15, the Pomona site was operating near capacity with 4,270 internees, reaching a peak population of 5,434 before its closing on August 24, 1942. Most internees were subsequently transferred to Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming. The site then housed U.S. troops and then German and Italian prisoners of war for the remainder of the conflict. Today, the Fairplex parking lot covers the footprint of the former assembly center; a commemorative plaque was erected on August 24, 2016 — the 74th anniversary of the center’s closure — at 1101 West McKinley Avenue to acknowledge this history.
The NHRA Winternationals and the Wally Parks Museum
On the Fairplex grounds, the NHRA In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip (also known as the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona) hosts the NHRA Winternationals — the traditional opening event of the NHRA drag racing season — as well as the closing Finals round. The Pomona dragstrip is one of the most historically significant drag racing venues in the world, with a heritage stretching back to the early years of organized drag racing in Southern California. Adjacent to the dragstrip is the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California — a museum dedicated to the history of American drag racing and to Wally Parks, the founder of the NHRA who helped codify drag racing as a safe and organized sport. The museum is a compelling complement to a Route 66 visit: both the highway and organized drag racing emerged from the postwar American love affair with automobiles and open road freedom.
The Pomona Swap Meet and Classic Car Show
Seven times throughout the year, the Fairplex grounds host the Pomona Swap Meet and Classic Car Show — one of the most celebrated automotive flea markets and classic car gatherings in Southern California. The event draws car enthusiasts, parts hunters, collectors, and restorers from across the region and beyond. The combination of swap meet (for parts and accessories) and car show (featuring hundreds of classic vehicles) makes it a natural convergence point for Route 66 culture: the same automobiles that the Mother Road was built to serve are the objects of reverence and commerce at the Pomona Swap Meet.
The Fox Theater Pomona: Art Deco Landmark and Arts Colony Anchor
In downtown Pomona, approximately 4 miles south of Foothill Boulevard, the Fox Theater Pomona stands as the architectural and cultural centerpiece of the city’s historic core. Opened on April 24, 1931 — five years after Route 66 was commissioned — the Fox Theater operated as a first-run motion picture theater for 50 years before closing and falling into disrepair. After a period of uncertainty, the building was sold in February 2007 to the Tessier family — the developers who also created the Pomona Arts Colony concept and restored many of the historic buildings in the downtown area. The family invested $10 million in restoring the Fox Theater, and it reopened on May 21, 2009, as a 2,000-seat live music and performing arts venue. It has been ranked among LA Weekly‘s top 50 venues in Los Angeles.
Architecture: Spanish Colonial Revival
The Fox Theater Pomona was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style — the architectural vocabulary that dominated Southern California’s public buildings, theaters, and civic structures in the 1920s and 1930s. The style was a conscious evocation of California’s Spanish and Mexican colonial heritage, featuring terracotta ornament, arched openings, tile roofwork, and decorative ironwork that set the building apart from the more restrained commercial architecture of Foothill Boulevard and gave it the kind of landmark presence that distinguished the great Depression-era movie palaces from ordinary commercial buildings. The theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as the flagship attraction of the Pomona Arts Colony — the vibrant neighborhood of galleries, nightclubs, lofts, and restaurants that has established downtown Pomona as one of the more culturally active small-city cores in the Los Angeles metropolitan region.
The Primera Casa Adobe and Palomares Adobe: Route 66’s Oldest Nearby Structures
The two adobe structures associated with the Palomares family of Rancho San José are among the oldest surviving buildings accessible from Route 66 in California — predating the highway by nearly a century and providing a direct physical connection to the Spanish and Mexican colonial history that underlies the entire San Gabriel Valley corridor.
La Primera Casa: The First House (1837)
Located at 1569 North Park Avenue, Pomona — approximately 2.4 miles south of Route 66 — “La Primera Casa” (Spanish for “The First House”) is the adobe home that Ygnacio Palomares built in 1837 as his first residence on the Rancho San José land grant. It is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Los Angeles County and a California State Historic Landmark. The house is built from sun-dried adobe bricks and represents the vernacular construction tradition of the Mexican rancho period — thick walls that regulate interior temperature naturally, a low-profile silhouette, and an L-shaped plan suited to the Southern California climate. Palomares lived here with his wife, Concepción López de Palomares, for 17 years before moving to the larger structure nearby.
Both the Primera Casa and the Palomares Adobe are operated by the Historical Society of Pomona Valley and are open for tours. The Primera Casa stands on a small site near Puddingstone Reservoir — the same reservoir whose creation the Carrión family near La Verne fought to prevent, connecting these two Route 66 corridor adobe histories through a shared watershed.
The Palomares Adobe (1850)
Approximately 1.2 miles northeast of the Primera Casa, at 491 East Arrow Highway, the Palomares Adobe (also known as the Ygnacio Palomares Adobe) is the second house that Palomares built, around 1850, after outgrowing the Primera Casa. This larger structure was positioned on the trade route linking San Bernardino with Los Angeles — the commercial corridor that preceded the National Old Trails Highway and eventually Route 66 itself. The house is depicted in vintage photographs showing its context in the agricultural landscape of the late 19th century. Like the Primera Casa, it is managed by the Historical Society of Pomona Valley and can be toured. Together, the two adobes constitute one of the most accessible and complete windows into the Mexican rancho period along the entire Route 66 corridor in California.
Route 66 Along Foothill Boulevard in Pomona
The 1.1-mile stretch of Foothill Boulevard that constitutes Pomona’s Route 66 alignment is, as the historical record makes clear, a section through which development has removed nearly all the buildings that would have served Route 66 travelers in the highway’s active years. The theroute-66.com documentation of the alignment notes that on the western end, at 175 West Foothill, an original A-frame building with a steep gable roof from 1966 survives — built as a Der Wienerschnitzel hot dog restaurant (the chain opened in 1961 and became the world’s largest hot dog chain) to replace the earlier Motel Foothill. At the corner of Garey Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, the Legends of America guide notes travelers would look for what was in earlier decades the western edge of a Route 66 commercial cluster that included Wilson’s Restaurant — the establishment now operating as La Paloma in neighboring La Verne and documented in our Route 66 in La Verne, California article.
The boundary complexity of Pomona’s Route 66 alignment is worth noting for thorough travelers: the north side of Foothill Boulevard for part of the western section is technically La Verne, not Pomona — a result of La Verne’s northward municipal expansion in the decades since Route 66 was commissioned. In 1956, La Verne’s northernmost fringe had reached Route 66, adding roughly 100 yards of roadway on the 300 block of East Foothill Boulevard to the La Verne side of the line. Route 66 travelers driving the alignment are, in the most literal sense, passing through two cities simultaneously for a stretch of road shorter than a typical city block.
The Pomona Arts Colony: A Route 66 Side Trip for Culture
One of the most compelling reasons to turn south from Foothill Boulevard and explore downtown Pomona is the Pomona Arts Colony — a vibrant neighborhood of galleries, performance spaces, loft apartments, restaurants, and nightclubs centered on the Fox Theater that has made downtown Pomona one of the more genuinely creative small-city arts districts in Southern California. The Arts Colony hosts a monthly Art Walk that draws visitors from across the region, with galleries opening their doors to foot traffic and the streets filling with vendors, musicians, and crowds on the designated evenings.
The Glass House — a smaller intimate venue near the Fox Theater — focuses on emerging artists and the indie music scene, providing a complement to the Fox’s larger touring acts. The American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in downtown Pomona is dedicated to ceramic arts and represents another dimension of the city’s investment in cultural institutions. The Garey Avenue Antique Row — the stretch of Garey Avenue near downtown — is a collector’s destination for antiques, vintage items, and Route 66 memorabilia. For Route 66 travelers who embrace the cultural life of the communities along the highway rather than just the highway itself, downtown Pomona’s Arts Colony offers one of the more rewarding stops on the entire California corridor.
Practical Information for Your Pomona Route 66 Visit
Getting to Pomona
From the East (from Claremont/San Bernardino): Follow Foothill Boulevard west from Claremont into Pomona. The Route 66 alignment enters Pomona from the east at approximately Garey Avenue.
From the West (from La Verne): Follow Foothill Boulevard east from La Verne across Williams Avenue / Thompson Wash into Pomona.
From State Route 57 (Orange Freeway): The freeway passes through Pomona. Exit at Foothill Boulevard for the Route 66 alignment, or continue south on Route 57 for downtown and the Fairplex.
From Interstate 10: Take Garey Avenue or White Avenue north to access downtown Pomona and the Fairplex grounds.
By Metrolink: The Pomona North station on the San Bernardino Line provides rail access from downtown Los Angeles (Union Station), with connections across the Inland Empire. Downtown Pomona is a short distance from the station, easily walkable to the Fox Theater and Arts Colony.
Planning Your Pomona Route 66 Side Trip
Because most of Pomona’s major attractions are 4 miles south of the Route 66 alignment on Foothill Boulevard, the most effective approach is to plan the Pomona visit as a deliberate urban exploration rather than a drive-by on the highway. Minimum recommended time: 2 hours for a focused visit to the Fairplex grounds (NHRA Museum, Wally Parks Museum, Millard Sheets Center), the Fox Theater exterior, and the Pomona Arts Colony. A full half-day allows comfortable exploration of the adobes, a walk through the Antique Row on Garey Avenue, and time at the Arts Colony.
Fairplex Visiting Information
The Fairplex at 1101 West McKinley Avenue operates year-round for various events. The LA County Fair is held in May. NHRA Winternationals and Finals are held in February and November respectively. The Pomona Swap Meet and Classic Car Show is held seven times annually. Check fairplex.com for current event schedules and ticket information before planning a visit.
Fox Theater Pomona
The Fox Theater Pomona is primarily a live music and performing arts venue — it is not a traditional museum or tourist attraction that is open for casual visits during non-event hours. Check the Fox Theater’s current schedule for upcoming shows. The Arts Colony surrounding the theater is walkable and accessible at street level at most times of day.
The Adobes
Both the Primera Casa Adobe (1569 North Park Avenue) and the Palomares Adobe (491 East Arrow Highway) are operated by the Historical Society of Pomona Valley. Contact the Society for current tour hours and access. Both sites include historical markers and are accessible for exterior viewing even when tour programs are not in session.
The Fairplex WWII Memorial Plaque
The commemorative plaque acknowledging the Pomona Assembly Center is located at 1101 West McKinley Avenue, approximately in the Fairplex parking lot area. It was erected on August 24, 2016. It is accessible when the Fairplex grounds are open to the public.
Climate
Pomona has a warm Mediterranean climate with an average of 288 sunny days per year. Summers are hot and dry, with average highs of 88°F and lows of 61°F in July. Winters are mild, averaging 68°F highs and 39°F lows in January. The Santa Ana winds blow hot and dry in autumn. Early summer brings “June Gloom” overcast from the Pacific Ocean. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) are the most pleasant visiting seasons.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights in the San Gabriel Valley
Route 66 in La Verne, California — Immediately 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 Isaac Lord’s bankrupt hotel), Heritage Park’s surviving orange groves, the Carrión Adobe (1868), and The Graduate’s famous 1967 church filming location.
Route 66 in Glendora, California — About 8 miles east on Route 66 (Foothill Boulevard through San Dimas), the city that officially renamed its Route 66 street after the highway — home to the Frank Chance Baseball Hall of Fame Building (1912), Rubel Castle (National Register), and the Golden Spur neon legacy.
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 California’s entire Mother Road.
Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga, California — About 20 miles east on Route 66, 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 stagecoach stop (since 1848), and the Magic Lamp Inn neon landmark.
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 — with Colorado Boulevard celebrating its own 150th anniversary in 2026 alongside the Route 66 Centennial.
Route 66 in Los Angeles, California — About 30 miles west, the Route 66 alignment through Los Angeles follows Sunset Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard to the Pacific Ocean.
Santa Monica Pier — End of the Trail — About 45 miles west at the Pacific Ocean, the End of the Trail sign marks the symbolic completion of the 2,448-mile journey from Chicago.
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, Pomona, Pasadena, and Los Angeles to the End of the Trail.
Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66 is November 11, 2026. Pomona — the “Queen of the Citrus Belt” with its layered history of prosperity, wartime sacrifice, cinematic significance, and the Fairplex on Route 66 — is a compelling chapter in the California Centennial story.
Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to all 2,448 miles of the Mother Road, from Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier.
