Wednesday’s column explains, if it needed explaining, what’s under construction by the 210 onramp at Carnelian in Rancho Cucamonga, then presents some news from Upland, from the cultural scene and from the Pomona Christmas Parade. Read it here.
If you lived here pre-1973, you might recall the 1903 Cadillac pictured above from the Thomas Winery at Foothill and Vineyard in Cucamonga. Gino Filippi, of the winery family, told me: “I remember when I was young, the car was at the Thomas Winery on display for years. The Thomas Bros. sold the winery to our family in 1967. I think the car was one of a few NOT included in the sale.”
Filippi sent me a link to a Bonhams auction notice for the car, from 2007, when it sold for $337,000. It was billed as “the oldest known surviving Cadillac.”
The fledgling company’s first car was completed in late 1902. Says Bonham: “The car offered here – serial number ‘13’, the oldest known surviving Cadillac – was one of three displayed at the New York Auto Show in January 1903, the others being numbers ‘10’ and ‘11’. At that show, Cadillac’s sales manager William E. Metzger took orders for a staggering 2,286 cars and sold all three on display, ‘13’ being purchased by a Mr. Thomas, owner of the Thomas Winery in Cucamonga, California.
“The factory ledger shows the first 17 cars produced, recording that ‘13’ was the 6th to be invoiced and the 3rd shipped. Six of the first dozen cars remained unsold and may have been retained for development purposes. None is known to exist. Historical research has determined that ‘13’ was the first Cadillac to be shipped west of the Mississippi and the first sold to California.”
Isn’t that something? The first Cadillac to be shipped west of the Mississippi bypassed Anaheim and Azusa to come straight to Cucamonga.
Bonhams continues: “’13′ remained within its first owner’s family, for many years on display at the Thomas Winery in Cucamonga, until February 1973 when it was acquired by Cadillac collector Patrick Herman, who knew little of its history at the time other than it was a one-owner car.” Herman bought the car from Thomas’ great-granddaughter and transported it to his home in Utah.
A Bloomberg story from 2007 says that when Pat Herman bought the car, the winery had been sold “and the Cadillac was stored in a garage full of old refrigerators and washing machines. The car was missing numerous parts and showed the ravages of time, so the restoration, which was completed in 1989, was not a simple process.”
The car was restored in Montebello and went on to win many car show awards.
Bonhams concludes: “The three cars displayed at the New York Auto Show in 1903 were the first Cadillacs shown to the public and the first ever sold. As the sole survivor of these pioneers, ’13′ is thus a vehicle of quite exceptional importance in the history of the American automobile industry. Quite simply: the Cadillac story started here.”
An RM Auctions notice in January 2012 says the car had been bought in 2007 by John O’Quinn, and adds the detail that in 1973, the car had been in storage in Upland. RM says the car sold at its 2012 auction, from O’Quinn’s estate, for $134,750, or well under half what O’Quinn paid.
I don’t know its whereabouts, although surely some Cadillac collectors’ group knows. More importantly for our purposes, do any of you recall having seen the car in its some 70 years in Cucamonga?
Here’s a video dated 2010 of what may be the same car, or at least a similar model, being cranked into motion.
We all know the 1910s Richfield gas station on Foothill Boulevard west of Archibald Avenue, which may be resurrected as a museum. You’d have to have lived here a lot longer to remember the old railroad car that rested in the lot next door.
It was camouflaged as a pseudo-respectable structure, as the photos show, but as the photo at bottom shows, there was a railroad car underneath.
It was operated as Dee’s Diner from 1959 to 1974, according to research by the diligent Kelly Zackmann of the Ontario library’s Model Colony History Room, and stood at 9656 Foothill. The dining car may have a longer history; the same address had the Milmar Drive-in in 1948 and Mil Mar Diner in 1951.
Lore has it that Dee’s can be seen in the 1974 B-movie “Big Bad Mama” with Angie Dickinson and William Shatner, or possibly the 1987 sequel. Both are available in full on YouTube (the links are embedded in the previous sentence) but I don’t have the patience to watch them. If you spot Dee’s, let us know where.
The photo above was contributed by Jane Vath O’Connell and the one below comes from Ed Dietl’s Images of Rancho Cucamonga book (but sent by Jane). The one at bottom, which would seem to show the arrival of the railroad car, came from the Ontario library via Dietl; it’s undated. Note the distinctive gas station’s garage in the background.
The car evidently still exists somewhere, I’m told, although the owner prefers anonymity. The lot next to the gas station is still vacant, but a commercial development is expected to break ground. I suspect it won’t include a restaurant in a beat-up railroad car.
If you remember anything about the diner, leave a comment, please!
Besse Fogle, a retired restaurateur in Pomona and Ontario, turned 100 on Monday. The day before, her friends, including yours truly, threw her a surprise party in Rancho Cucamonga. That’s the subject of my Wednesday column. Above, Fogle talks to friend Norm Stutzke.
A 45-second video of the party can be seen here, although you’ll have to turn your computer, or head, sideways…I shot it in the landscape format and there didn’t seem to be a way to turn the video right-side-up.
In Friday’s column, I recount a visit to the Rancho Cucamonga DMV, the one that opened a year ago. Have you been? Kind of snazzy, for a DMV, and my experience was pleasant. Yours might be too, if you make an appointment instead of merely showing up.
A group representing the Rancho Cucamonga Public Library picked up an award at the White House from Michelle Obama last week. Exciting, eh? My column has the details. Above, parent Christine DeVries, library director Robert Karatsu and the wife of the
Plans are in the works to renovate the 1920s Richfield service station on Foothill Boulevard (the old Route 66) at Archibald Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga and turn it into a museum and visitor center. That’s the leadoff item in my Friday column, followed by items from around the valley, plus two news items from the Rancho Cucamonga library.
The scene above is from Wednesday’s kickoff ceremony.
Friday’s column (read it here) is about the Magic Lamp, the venerable Rancho Cucamonga restaurant on Foothill Boulevard, which changed hands this week. The new operator, Sartaj Singh, has a proven track record: He also has Antonino’s in the same city. Feel free to comment if you have thoughts about the column or stories about the restaurant.
If you’ve traveled in western Rancho Cucamonga along Foothill Boulevard of late, you may have noticed with curiosity the new traffic lights at Baker Avenue just east of the new overhead crossing. The lights are arranged horizontally, not vertically.
What gives? Is this temporary, or a retro design to match the bridge? Neither. Curt Billings, associate city engineer for Rancho Cucamonga, said it was done to ensure motorists heading east could see all three phases of the signal from as far away as possible.
“The signal heads were rotated horizontally to increase the sight distance for eastbound traffic because of the overhead obstruction of the bridge,” Billings says by email. “This horizontally mounted signal head provides the greatest amount of time to see all the lights, most importantly the red light, and as far ahead as San Bernardino Road.”
There’s a second signal like this in Rancho Cucamonga, at the intersection of Etiwanda and Miller avenues, due to sight issues because of the 15 freeway overpass, Billings said.
Nice to know that Rancho Cucamonga doesn’t mind bending over backward, or at least tipping sideways, to make us safe.
Reader Will Plunkett, who contributed these photos, says: “There’s a house in northern RC that looks like a castle (in the appropriately named Castlegate tract of homes), and I see it often while driving past. The other day, I noticed it was tented for bugs (I guess) and snapped a picture. They finished and now you can see it, sans tent. I liked how they wrapped up the turret part of the roof in a separate tent. Do the termites do a trapeze act?”
