Pomona Water Powerplant

Almarian Decker wanted three phases and Westinghouse told him it was impractical, so he built the plant single-phase and solved the distance another way: step the voltage up to 10,000, run it fourteen miles to Pomona, step it down again at the far end. It ran from the end of 1892. A twenty-nine-mile line to San Bernardino followed within weeks and briefly held the world record. Decker built his three-phase plant at Mill Creek the next year, and three-phase is what the world uses now.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cajon Pass — 16 mi
  The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.
• Wigwam Motel — 20 mi
  Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.
• Original McDonald's Site — 23 mi
  The corner where two brothers invented fast food, now an unofficial museum the corporation has never blessed.
• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 26 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.

More markers nearby

• Madonna of the Trail — 7.4 mi
• Tapia Adobe (Site of) — 8.2 mi
• Cucamonga Rancho Winery — 8.2 mi
• Adobe de Palomares — 9.3 mi