Nostalgia & History > SP/PE Etiwanda: Once Upon a Time

SP 2616 visits Etiwanda with a lumber load.The first view shows the Local shoving into spot on the house track. the second view passing the depot at Etiwanda. And the third shot shows the Local crossing Baseline returning cab hop to West Colton. Lots of open space and smog.Bill Webb

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Great material—thank you.
—Mac

I will assume that none of this track exists anymore.....

The right of way was purchased by SANBAG and converted to trail from Claremont to Fontana I believe.The portion from Claremont to LA is used for Metrolink passenger service.The remaining segment from Bench to Rialto exists today to serve a lumber yard in Rialto.Bill Webb

When were these photos taken? I'm sure the wide open spaces are now wall-to-wall suburbia.

DNRY122 Wrote:
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> When were these photos taken? I'm sure the wide
> open spaces are now wall-to-wall suburbia.

Here is what those three shots would look like today.

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Thanks for the photos showing the slower pace side of the old SP.

When I was at the opening of the Remodeled Etiwanda Station , I , noticed that their is still track located on the North side of the Depot that never got removed

Non standard Nathan P5 horn on SW1500 2616, probably a Karl Ragoza placement. Railroad, locomotive, and Karl are now all gone!

Regards, Jim Evans

The shots were taken in 1981.And yes, wall to wall suburbia.But, the air quality and visibility are much improved. Bill Webb

Which is an accomplishment since 1957 was about the worst and there's a lot more people
there now, no heavy industry any more but a lot more people.

spider1319 Wrote:
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> The shots were taken in 1981.And yes, wall to wall
> suburbia.But, the air quality and visibility are
> much improved.

That's what I noticed immediately. I lived in Claremont and Glendora while in grad school from 1973-1976, and back again from 1982-2001. What an enormous change in air quality during that time.

callum_out Wrote:
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> Which is an accomplishment since 1957 was about
> the worst

I'd say it was several years after that. I spent a couple years having 8AM classes at Chaffey College up on the hillside in 69 and 70 or thereabouts. I remember the first year you could watch the smog start from Kaiser before 8, have it filling a lot of the east valley by 9, have it filling most of the west valley by 10, and the level up over the college by 11. A year or two later and the valley would be full by 8 and the smog level over the college by class break at 9. Also, it started filling from the west to east, as the imported smog from LA got worse. Of course Kaiser was gone a few years after that, but the smog sure wasn't!

Bad as it got in that area, if I remember the worst smog was around the Glendora-Arcadia area, up against the foothills. They got it blown in from both directions and it pocketed there against the hills. I worked in Pasadena a little north of Foothill Blvd. in the 1970s, and I remember there were many years that we couldn't see the hills to the north for about 9 months out of the year. It wan't unusual for visibility on the freeway to be one mile or less, then everything just faded into a reddish-grey. Reminded me a lot of a story by the name of _The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag_.