California State Route 60

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Route 60

Length:

70 mi (113 km)

Formed:

Major cities:

Los Angeles
Monterey Park
Montebello
South El Monte
City of Industry
Diamond Bar
Pomona
Chino Hills
Chino
Ontario
Riverside
Moreno Valley
Beaumont

Direction:

West-East

JUNCTION	POSTMILE
I-10	LA R0.00
I-5	LA R0.54
I-710	LA R3.24
SR-19 (SR-164 )	LA 9.52
I-605	LA 11.71
SR-39	LA ?
SR-57	LA R23.56 LA R25.46
SR-71	LA R29.40
SR-83	SBD R4.57
SR-31	SBD R9.96 (RIV R0.00)
I-15	RIV R0.49
SR-91	RIV 12.20
I-215	RIV 12.20 RIV R12.06
I-10	RIV 30.50
California State Routes Unconstructed - Deleted - Scenic
< Route 59	Route 61 >

State Route 60 runs from Route 10 near the Los Angeles River to Route 10 in Riverside County, with a multiplex at Interstate 215.

1 Route description
2 History
3 State law
4 Control Cities
5 See also
6 External links
- 6.1 Points of interest

[edit] Route description

State Route 60; the Pomona Freeway is highlighted in red and the Moreno Valley Freeway is highlighted in light blue.

Route 60 serves the cities and communities on the eastern side of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area and runs along the south side of the San Gabriel Valley. The west terminus of the freeway is at the East Los Angeles Interchange complex. The east terminus is at the junction with the San Bernardino Freeway, Interstate 10 (I-10) in Beaumont. The freeway is known as the Pomona Freeway west of its junction with State Route 91 and Interstate 215 in Riverside. East of this interchange the freeway is known as the Moreno Valley Freeway until its terminus at its junction with Interstate 10. Interestingly, the freeway shares the alignment of the Orange Freeway, State Route 57 for some two miles (3 km) in Diamond Bar and it shares the alignment of the Escondido Freeway, Interstate 215 for about 5 miles (8 km) in Riverside, California. The route takes its number from former U.S. Route 60. See the Pomona Freeway page for additional information.

[edit] History

Before 1964, U.S. 60 ran from Los Angeles to the Arizona state line, where it continued its nationwide trek, often overlapping with U.S. 99 and U.S. 70 along the way. The advent of Interstate 10 created a situation where, at one point, four different signed routes would run along the state-maintained highway.

In 1964, California implemented a plan to simplify its highway-numbering system, where one state highway had only one route number and multiplexing was sternly discouraged. As a result, U.S. 60 (along with U.S. 70 and U.S. 99) were decommissioned. Interstate 10 (as Route 10) superseded U.S. 60's alignment from Beaumont and towards the Arizona state line, even though the routing was only partly a freeway. This left the officially designated Route 60 from Beaumont to Los Angeles orphaned from its original U.S. Highway (which to this day begins at a point on Interstate 10 east of Quartzsite, Arizona). This new Route 60 was provisionally signed as a U.S. Highway since the designation would guide motorists from Los Angeles to Arizona in the absence of a completed freeway for Interstate 10; when all of Route 10 was upgraded to a freeway, the U.S. Highway designation disappeared. Even today, in a rather strange twist, the edges of the original U.S. 60 shield on overhead highway signs along Interstate 10 are now covered by a miner's spade Route 60 sign; these are still visible at the connector ramp from westbound Interstate 10 onto Route 60 in Beaumont. Stranger still, a directional sign off Hess Boulevard at State Route 62 in Morongo Valley still points southward to "U.S. 60". Close examination of that same sign clearly shows where the numerals "70" and "99" were once mounted, an oversight of more than forty years' duration.

The stretch of Route 60 along the Moreno Valley Freeway made national headlines in April, 2004, when five-year-old Ruby Bustamante of Indio and her 26-year-old mother, Norma, were reported missing. Their car had left the road, apparently unwitnessed, between the gap in two guard rails on April 4. It then crashed underneath a tree in a deep ravine. Though Mrs. Bustamante lost her life, presumably at the moment of impact, Ruby survived on her own for ten days on cups of uncooked Top Ramen noodles and bottles of Gatorade which were in the car. The parent companies of both products, Nissin Foods and Quaker Oats respectively, have each pledged $5000 toward Ruby's college education.