Was the cheeseburger invented on Route 66?

The Pasadena Sun newspaper investigates the claim that the cheeseburger was invented in a diner on Route 66 in Pasadena, Calif.

It turns out the case is fairly strong:

Legend has it that teenage short-order cook Lionel Clark Sternberger invented the cheeseburger one fateful day in the mid-1920s at a restaurant called “The Rite Spot” on Colorado Boulevard, west of the Colorado Street Bridge, then part of Highway 66. […]

The first stop on a scavenger hunt for proof of Pasadena’s cheeseburger birthright was the archives of the Pasadena Museum of History, where reading room manager Anuja Navare found a menu for The Rite Spot. Among steaks, sandwiches and a chicken-and-noodle dish is listed the “Aristocratic Burger: the Original Hamburger with Cheese.” The price was 15 cents.

The menu places The Rite Spot at 1500 W. Colorado Blvd., on the corner of Avenue 64, where a credit union office stands today, and lists a second location at 606 E. Colorado in Glendale, both operated by an L.C. Sternberger. Though undated, the menu was produced by the Trapp Printing Co. in Glendale, which according to records, closed in 1939.

The Sun also checked other records to see when a restaurant in that vicinity was operating. Then there’s this supporting evidence — Don Sternberger, the son of Lionel’s brother, Van.

Van’s son Don Sternberger, 67, of Murietta, heard the story behind the “Aristocratic Burger” as a child serving them at a restaurant the family later opened at 6138 N. Figueroa Street in Highland Park, also called The Rite Spot.

“Lionel was a big eater. One day he just decided he wanted a hamburger with cheese on it and started doing it. That’s how my dad described it to me,” said Don Sternberger, uncertain of the year. “My dad was proud of it. I tried once to get him to go to In-N-Out with me and he wouldn’t.” […]

Sternberger said his father claimed Lionel grilled the first cheeseburger while working at a roadside fruit, tobacco and hamburger stand that the family had operated prior to building the first Rite Spot on those same grounds in the late 1920s or early ‘30s. The only known photograph of that stand went on display at The Rite Spot in Highland Park after the family sold the Pasadena restaurant and it became known as Henry’s Rite Spot. It appears the photo was labeled “Rite Spot” at some point to identify the unnamed stand as the Pasadena restaurant’s origin, he said. That could explain why the restaurant was not listed as The Rite Spot in the 1927 city directory.

To celebrate the occasion, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce launched Pasadena Cheeseburger Week to help promote the city’s restaurants.

Restaurants in Denver and Louisville, Ky., also make the claim for the first cheeseburger. But those claims date only to the mid-1930s.

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