San Bernardino
— — the valley where Route 66 hits the mountains.
Not only on a wall.
“A valley city under tall, dry mountains, about an hour east of downtown Los Angeles. Route 66 runs straight through, and the first McDonald's opened on E Street here in 1940 before anyone knew what the arch would become. Cajon Pass climbs out the back, north toward the high desert. In the foothills the orange groves are mostly gone, but the National Orange Show still keeps the name and the light is the same colour every winter afternoon.
San Bernardino, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
San Bernardino sits in the Inland Empire of Southern California, about 95 kilometres east of downtown Los Angeles, at the southern foot of the San Bernardino Mountains. The city was founded in 1851 by a party of Latter-day Saint colonists from Salt Lake City who purchased the Rancho San Bernardino. Today the population is roughly 222,000, making it the county seat of San Bernardino County, which by land area is the largest county in the contiguous United States. Cajon Pass climbs north from the city toward the Mojave Desert.
The first McDonald's restaurant opened at 1398 North E Street in San Bernardino on May 15, 1940, founded by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. The site now houses an unofficial museum of early McDonald's memorabilia. The city also hosts the National Orange Show, an agricultural fair running since 1911 that gave its name to the surrounding Orange Show district. U.S. Route 66 ran through downtown from 1926 until its decommissioning in 1985, and the corridor is still marked in the original alignment along Fifth Street and Mount Vernon Avenue.
Summers in San Bernardino routinely cross 38°C, and the Santa Ana winds rake down out of Cajon Pass through autumn, dry and warm. Winter brings the cleanest light of the year, when the San Bernardino Mountains carry snow above about 1,500 metres and the peak of San Gorgonio, the highest in Southern California at 3,506 metres, is visible from the city floor. The annual rainfall averages about 400 millimetres, almost all of it between December and March.