Route 66: California Places

The museum is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the scientific, historical, and cultural heritage of the Mojave Desert. The facility offers more than 4,000 square feet of museum, including a Gift Shop and a Book Store that carries nearly 500 titles.

Few sites along Route 66 are as immediately recognizable as the teepee-shaped cabins of the Wigwam Villages. Depicted as the Cozy Cone Motel in the film Cars, there are actually two Wigwam Villages along the Mother Road.

Route 66 garages and dealerships like the Howard Motor Company are significant for many reasons. Dealers sold, repaired, and sometimes even assembled the automobiles that crowded Route 66 and local roads by the middle of the 20th century.

A drive through the Arroyo Seco is a ride through history. Some call the Arroyo Seco Parkway the starting point for Los Angeles car culture. It was the first “freeway” in the West and an engineering marvel of its time. Add to that the distinction and imprint of historic Route 66 and you have the makings for the perfect adventure by car.

When it opened in 1925, the Aztec Hotel was not only the most ornate hotel in Monrovia, it was also the first attempt to apply the principles of Mayan art and architecture to modern American buildings. Located along an early alignment of Route 66, the hotel quickly became Monrovia’s premier hostelry and an architectural curiosity in the area.

The many buildings and myriad of architectural styles in the Broadway Theater and Commercial District reveal the exuberance of the early entertainment industry in Southern California. When commercial activity in Los Angeles turned south down Broadway early in the 20th century, it created a thoroughly modern environment for extravagant shopping and flamboyant theaters. As the western terminus of Route 66 between 1926 and 1936, the district was a portal to coastal California.

The Bekins Storage Company Roof Sign, which today reads “A. American Storage Co.,” may well strike viewers as unusually large. Mounted 60 feet above the street, the rectangular sign is 32 feet long and 12 feet high and is visible for several blocks in both directions along Pasadena's South Fair Oaks Avenue. Bordering Route 66 when it used Fair Oaks Avenue from 1926 until 1940, the Bekins sign’s size made it impossible to miss, even from the window of a passing automobile.

The Rialto Theatre is one of a dwindling handful of Pasadena’s grand theatres from the early 20th century. Fortunately, it is also one of the best preserved. Completed in 1925 and trimmed with Spanish tile, the Rialto building’s design included spaces for the grandiose theatre, retail shops, and apartments. Despite minor modifications to the street-level shop frontage, the original Moorish motif is still intact and the building remains largely unaltered.

With its majestic arches rising 150 feet above the deeply cut Arroyo Seco, the Colorado Street Bridge was proclaimed the highest concrete bridge in the world upon completion in 1913. The bridge impressed travelers from the day it opened.

The Harvey House Railroad Depot in Barstow is one of the Fred Harvey Company hotels and restaurants, a chain described as a “the greatest civilizing influence in the West.” Fred Harvey hotels and restaurants were a unique adjunct of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway that played an important role in improving the quality and service of food along the rail lines.