This sign stood for decades, probably, on North Towne Avenue just above the 10 Freeway, pointing the way north to Claremont and Route 66, and west to La Verne. I liked seeing it and always meant to pull over at the next corner to walk back for a photo, but never did. “Next time,” I would think, even though my fear was that the sign might not be there the next time I drove past. But it always was.

Sometime in 2017, though, the sign was heavily damaged by graffiti. And when I drove by this spring, it was gone.

Reader Jason, thankfully, had taken a photo and sent it to me by Twitter in June 2017. (It’s the photo above. You can see even at that point that the 66 emblem was painted over or faded and that the bottom strip had been patched.) He asked recently what had happened to the sign.

The city of Pomona took it down, Deputy City Manager Mark Gluba told me.

It’s almost certainly a Caltrans sign, Gluba said, as the directions serve a regional rather than a city purpose, but the sign was old enough that Caltrans had no record of it and denied ownership.

“We decided to remove the sign due to the graffiti and the general condition of the sign,” Gluba said. It wasn’t clear whether the sign is in the City Yard or tossed, but it was so badly defaced that to me it didn’t look salvageable.

Is there another sign denoting the way to Route 66 in the Inland Valley? If so, I’m unaware of it, but would like to know about it. I do like the occasional signs on Holt, Foothill or Mission telling the distance to San Bernardino, Riverside or Pomona, which still serve a purpose but also seem like a throwback to the pre-freeway days.