Cucamonga Rancho Winery

The house Tapia built is gone and the vines are not. He planted on the Cucamonga grant almost as soon as he had it in 1839, and the sandy wash that made poor farmland turned out to suit wine grapes better than almost anywhere in the state. Cucamonga was a serious wine district for over a century, thousands of acres of head-pruned vines, before the freeways and the tract houses took most of it. A little of it is still in production.

What the plaque says

Established by Tiburcio Tapia to whom the Cucamonga Rancho was granted March 3, 1839 by Governor Juan Batista Alvarado of Mexico.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Graber Olive House — 2.9 mi
  The oldest business in Ontario, a cannery of five hundred brine vats — shut since the pandemic and in foreclosure.
• Kaiser Steel Mill Site — 6.4 mi
  The mill that made Fontana a steel town, gave the country Kaiser Permanente, and drew a color line at Base Line Road.
• Planes of Fame Air Museum — 8.9 mi
  On the field where the country smelted its surplus warplanes — and about thirty of the aircraft here still fly.
• Wigwam Motel — 15 mi
  Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.

More markers nearby

• Tapia Adobe (Site of) — steps away
• Madonna of the Trail — 2.3 mi
• Adobe de Palomares — 7.7 mi
• Pomona Water Powerplant — 8.2 mi