California State Route 57 - History

History

The road through Brea Canyon was oiled dirt by the late 1910s, providing a good connection across an outbranching of the Peninsular Ranges between the Los Angeles Basin and Pomona Valley. This road left the main coast highway (Harbor Boulevard) at Fullerton and followed the present Brea Boulevard and Brea Canyon Road, merging with the Valley Boulevard from Los Angeles near Walnut and continuing east to Pomona via Valley and Pomona Boulevards. Los Angeles County paved the road in concrete in early 1923, and in 1931 it was added to the state highway system as a branch of Route 19. Until then, Route 19 had connected Route 9 near Claremont with Riverside, following Garey Avenue and Mission Boulevard through Pomona.

The state built a bypass of the Valley Boulevard portion of the route in the early-to-mid-1930s, leaving the old road near Diamond Bar and heading northeast through the foothills, along the present freeway alignment and Mission Boulevard. To the south, the legislature added then-unrelated Route 180 along State College Boulevard in 1933, connecting Route 2 (I-5) near the Santa Ana River with Route 175 (Orangethorpe Avenue, later replaced by SR 91) near Placentia. By 1955, the Brea Canyon Freeway was proposed to begin at the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) near La Veta Avenue in Santa Ana and head north, paralleling Routes 180 and 19 to Pomona. The portion northeast of Diamond Bar into Pomona soon became part of the planned Pomona Freeway, and the name of the remainder was changed to Orange Freeway. The state legislature altered the definition of Route 19 to reflect this in 1957 by moving its south end to Santa Ana.

Then, in 1957, the northernmost part of present SR 57 was added to the state highway system as part of Route 240, which the legislature designated along the route planned for I-210. This became part of the proposed Temescal Freeway, later the Corona Freeway; a southerly extension of the Orange Freeway to Legislative Route 60 (SR 1) near Huntington Beach was added in 1959 as Route 273. Also in 1959, the legislature created Route 272, extending the line of the Orange Freeway north from the Pomona Freeway to the Temescal Freeway, completing the proposed freeway corridor that is now SR 57. When the entire route, except Route 240 which was still part of I-210, was redesignated SR 57 in the 1964 renumbering, none of these proposed freeways had been built; the only constructed segment was the old surface road from Fullerton towards Pomona. The part of old Route 19 east of Route 272 became part of SR 60. As part of the same renumbering, Route 180 on State College Boulevard became Route 250, which was amended the next year to provide for its deletion once that portion of the SR 57 freeway was completed (between I-5 and SR 91).

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in Placentia on January 30, 1967, to begin construction of the Orange Freeway. The first portion was dedicated on May 16, 1969, and opened soon after, extending north from the Riverside Freeway (SR 91) to Nutwood Avenue. Over the next few years, the freeway was completed from SR 91 north to I-10, and I-210 was built north to the present end of SR 57; the Pomona Freeway (SR 60), which overlaps it through Diamond Bar, was constructed at the same time. The last pieces of that portion were the freeway through Brea Canyon, which opened March 13, 1972, and the four-level Kellogg Hill Interchange at I-10, which was dedicated May 1, 1972, and opened soon thereafter. Finally, the Orange Freeway was extended south from SR 91 to I-5 in the mid-1970s, allowing Route 250 to be turned back to local governments, though the subsequent deletion from the Streets and Highways Code did not take place until 1981. With the extension of SR 210 around San Bernardino in 1998, the former easternmost piece of I-210 to the Kellogg Hill Interchange instead became a northerly extension of SR 57, though it remains officially part of the Interstate Highway System.