Cucamonga Service Station

What is Cucamonga Service Station?

The station is a compact service building with a Spanish Colonial front, the kind of place where drivers once pulled in for fuel and repairs. A larger garage used to stand behind it, rebuilt with a matching Spanish Colonial facade. A fire left that garage weak, and it came down during a heavy storm in 2011. The front station survived and is the building travelers see today.

History of Cucamonga Service Station

A local story says Henry Klusman, who put up many of Cucamonga's early buildings, built the station in 1915, but no records back that up. William Harvey, the owner on record, also ran the Cucamonga Garage and Cyclery next door. In 1914 he bought the neighboring lot and built a bigger garage with pumps at the curb, and a year later he bought the land behind it from Klusman.

When Route 66 was created in 1926, the station found itself on the new national highway. Between the 1930s and the 1960s it sold Richfield Oil and was run by Ancil Morris, and it stopped selling fuel in 1971. In 2009 the city council gave it landmark status, though no money for repairs came with it.

Visiting Cucamonga Service Station: tips

The station sits right on the old highway, so it is a simple pull-over. Take photos from the sidewalk on Foothill Boulevard, and check the station's website for visiting details before counting on a look inside. The John Rains House museum and the Tapia Adobe landmark are each about 1 mile away, and the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Compound is about 3.9 miles away.