The city of Fontana, Calif., is jumping on board a bit late, but I'm glad to see it says it will try to revitalize its portion of Route 66.
According to the San Bernardino County Sun:
City leaders are trying to celebrate Fontana's Route 66 ties through streetscape, such as fountains, a park, signs, monuments, decorative street lights, landscaped medians and possibly an arched entryway.
Council members are in Washington today to hit up legislators for $75,000 in funding to preserve the heritage of the Mother Road.
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Route 66-themed amenities, such as street signs that look like license plates, would be added as Foothill Boulevard is improved with lighting, curbs and gutters and new development.
City crews are already working to spruce up the street at Almeria and Tokay avenues with landscaped medians and decorative light poles.
Perhaps new archaeological surveys of open land contiguous to Foothill Ave. (where heavy machinery would be parked and road maintenance materials would typically be piled – having direct impacts on potentially sensitive surfaces) should be in order, since little competant work has been performed in Fontana for the purpose of identification of prehistoric habitation remains, and previous surveys have been informed by poor interpretations of geologic and environmental data and processes. I can imagine that Fontana will, like always, enlist the services of unreflexive, careerist environmental mitigation professionals, finding nothing, but further permitting the destruction of the natural and cultural past of pre-European inhabitants, including wildlife.