Route 66 West: Cajon to the Sea
The Mother Road's last miles — down Cajon Pass into Tovaangar, the Tongva world, past the Wigwam Motel and Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard to the pier at Santa Monica, where the road runs out at the Pacific.
Everything west of Cajon Pass is Tovaangar — the world of the Tongva, whose villages covered the Los Angeles Basin and the southern Channel Islands for thousands of years before Spain arrived. The mission at San Gabriel, a few blocks off the old road, was built with their forced labor; the Spanish renamed them Gabrieleno for it, and some of their descendants today carry the ancestral name Kizh instead. The basin's history did not begin with a highway, and this guide does not pretend it did. At the pass itself the road crosses out of Maara'yam country, dropping through the gap the railroads found first.
For the Route 66 traveler, Cajon is the arrival scene: after crossing prairie and desert all the way from Chicago, the road tips over the rim and descends toward orange groves and ocean air — the moment every Dust Bowl family had been driving toward. What follows is the Mother Road at its most urban and most mythic: San Bernardino, where the first McDonald's stood and a museum now marks the spot; the Wigwam Motel's concrete teepees, still renting rooms; Foothill Boulevard through the old citrus towns; and Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard, where the route parades past brick storefronts on the Rose Parade's own street, near the 1913 arches of the Colorado Street Bridge over the Arroyo Seco. Between the pass and the pier the old road wears a dozen local street names, and following it is half the sport.
Then the end. Route 66 runs out at the Pacific in Santa Monica, and the pier — a few blocks past the route's official terminus, though nobody quibbles — carries the sign everyone came for: End of the Trail. This region keeps to the road itself, the corridor and its roadside, not the whole metropolis. The ocean stops the highway; it is the one border on the entire route that argues with no one.
What to See in Route 66 West: Cajon to the Sea
6 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Architecture
Roadside Stops
Attractions
Scenic Drives through Route 66 West: Cajon to the Sea
Stories from Route 66 West: Cajon to the Sea
Route 66 West: Cajon to the Sea rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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