California State Route 60
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Template:RouteboxcaCalifornia State Route 60 runs from Route 10 near the Los Angeles River to Route 10 in Riverside County, with a discontinuity at Interstate 215.
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Route Description
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 Routes 91 and 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, Route 57 for some two miles in Diamond Bar and it shares the alignment of the Escondido Freeway, Interstate 215 for about 5 miles in Riverside, California. The route takes its number from former U.S. Highway 60. See the Pomona Freeway page for additional information.
Legal Definition
"Route 60 is from:
- "(a) Route 10 near the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles to Route 215 in Riverside via Pomona.
- (b) Route 215 near Moreno Valley to Route 10 near Beaumont. [CS&HC Sec. 360]
In 1968, since the new Route 10 was not yet entirely upgraded, the following provision was added as CS&HC Sec. 641 (and has since been deleted):
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, route shield signs shall be placed by the department on Interstate Highway 10 between Blythe and Beaumont so as to designate the highway as both Interstate Highway 10 and U.S. Highway 60."
F&E System
Entire route. [CS&HC Sec. 253.1]
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 Interstate 10 (as Route 10) superseded U.S. 60's alignment from Beaumont and towards the Arizona state line, even though the routing was only partly a freeway.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. Since it crossed no state lines and ran fewer than 300 miles, Route 60 was signed as a California state highway. 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 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 twenty-six-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.
See Also
External Links
- Caltrans: Route 60 highway conditions (http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/sr60)
- Cal-NExUS: Route 60 East (http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/traffops/signtech/calnexus/reports/sixtyeast.htm)
- Cal-NExUS: Route 60 West (http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/traffops/signtech/calnexus/reports/sixtywest.htm)
- California Highways: Route 60 (http://www.cahighways.org/057-064.html#060)
- The Big Highways Page: California Route 60 (http://www.geocities.com/bennyp81/ca60.html)
Points of Interest
- Whittier Narrows Recreation Area (http://parks.co.la.ca.us/whittier_rpark.html) (Rosemead Boulevard - Route 164 as Route 19)
- University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu/) (University Avenue, Riverside)