Route 66 Through Claremont: Foothill Boulevard's Heyday

Drive Foothill Boulevard east through Claremont and the buildings tell you what the road used to be. Deep setbacks. Parking in front. Signs sized to be read at speed. Motels, garages and drive-in-era retail, some repurposed, some still recognizable.

None of that vocabulary belongs to a residential street or a town center. It belongs to a highway, and for decades Foothill Boulevard was one of the most famous highways in America.

The road before the freeway

Route 66 ran from Chicago to Southern California, and its final stretch through the inland valleys followed Foothill Boulevard. Before the interstate system, this was the way people arrived — migrants, tourists, freight, everyone.

A through highway generates a specific kind of commerce: gas, food, lodging, repairs. Businesses located to be seen and entered from a car at speed. That means setbacks for parking, wide frontages, and buildings pushed back from the road — the exact inverse of the Village's sidewalk-edge storefronts a few blocks south.

Two commercial patterns, half a mile apart, built for two completely different modes of travel. Claremont has both, and it is a rare thing.

What the interstate did

When the freeway system took long-distance traffic off the surface highway, roadside economies along Route 66 collapsed almost everywhere. The customers were now passing at seventy miles an hour a mile away, with no reason to exit.

Foothill's stretch through this valley did not die, because it kept a local function: it remained a major east-west arterial connecting foothill communities. But its character changed from highway to boulevard, and the building stock adapted unevenly.

For specifics — which alignment carried the route in which years, which surviving buildings are documented Route 66 businesses, and what recognition or designation applies — go to the record. Route 66 attracts a very large amount of enthusiastic, imprecise history. The city, Claremont Heritage, county records and established Route 66 preservation organizations hold the checkable version.

Why Foothill still shapes Claremont real estate

1. It is a hard edge. A multi-lane arterial divides neighborhoods. Streets on either side develop differently, walk differently and often price differently. When a listing says "just north of Foothill," that is a meaningful locational statement, not filler.

2. Frontage means commercial zoning. The highway legacy is why the corridor carries commercial and mixed-use zoning while blocks immediately behind it are residential. Buyers of homes one street off an arterial should look at what the adjacent commercial zoning actually permits, not just at what is there today.

3. Noise and air are real. Proximity to a busy arterial affects both. It also affects price, which is why a house near Foothill often looks like a bargain relative to a similar house four blocks north. Sometimes that is genuine value; sometimes it is the market pricing a condition accurately. Stand in the backyard at rush hour before deciding which.

4. Redevelopment pressure concentrates there. Aging strip commercial on a major arterial is exactly where California's housing policy pushes new mixed-use and multifamily development. If you are buying near the corridor, ask the city what is entitled, proposed or in the pipeline nearby. That is a public record.

5. The mid-century houses behind it are a distinct stock. Much of the residential development flanking Foothill went in during the postwar decades, when the highway was still the main road. Those neighborhoods have their own character, covered in the postwar boom.

The nostalgia question

Route 66 branding is a genuine economic asset for towns along the alignment, and it is also, frequently, a marketing overlay applied loosely.

If a Claremont property is described as a Route 66 landmark, ask what documentation supports it: original construction date, original use, whether any designation exists, and where that is recorded. A building on the alignment is not automatically historic, and a historic building is not automatically restricted. Both are checkable facts and both matter to what you can do with the property.

The two Claremonts the highway created

Look at a map of the town and Foothill divides it roughly into a southern half organized around the depot, the Village and the colleges, and a northern half organized around the automobile, later subdivision and the foothills.

South of the corridor you get the original grid, smaller lots, older housing and genuine walkability. North of it you get curvilinear streets, larger lots, mid-century and later construction, and a car-first pattern. Neither is better; they are different products serving different buyers, and a great deal of confusion in local pricing conversations comes from comparing one to the other as though they were interchangeable.

The corridor itself is the seam. That is why homes immediately adjacent to it price differently from homes a few blocks in either direction, and why "which side of Foothill" is one of the first questions a knowledgeable local buyer asks.

How to evaluate a home near Foothill

• Visit at 8am, 6pm and on a Saturday. Arterial conditions vary enormously by hour.
• Check the zoning of every adjacent and rear parcel, not just the subject property.
• Ask the city about pending or approved projects within a few blocks.
• Look at the walking route to the Village and to schools. Does it require crossing the arterial, and where?
• Consider window and insulation upgrades as a real budget line rather than an afterthought.

Why the highway belongs in the town's history

Claremont has been shaped, repeatedly, by transportation. A railroad created the townsite. A highway created a second commercial spine. A commuter rail line later re-centered value on the original depot. Each mode left a physical layer, and all three layers are still visible in a fifteen-minute drive.

That sequence is traced end to end in from Santa Fe to Metrolink. For the wider arc, start at the Claremont history hub.

Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.