Pasadena's Orange Inn

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, there were four things true of Central and Southern California: Towns were far apart, the weather was hot, cars had no air conditioning, and orange groves proliferated everywhere. As a result, numerous juice stands shaped like giant ornages sprung up everywhere along the north-south Central California Highway 99 and of course the famous east-west Route 66. Parched travellers (and presumably their children) could stop on a hot day and slack their thirst.

Determining the location of the particular stand shown in our photo proved to be a bit of a challenge, until I came across the Giant Oranges page on the RoadsideArchitecture.com website. There I found a scan of a real-photo postcard (click here to see it) showing the same Orange Inn vintage orange juice stand under an old oak tree. The good news is that after I enhanced the postcard image a bit, the writing at the bottom became distinguishable, and reads:"Everything in Orange. Foothill Blvd, Pasadena, Calif." Foothill Blvd was part of Route 66.

In discussing this with Debra, the owner of RoadsideArchitecture.com, she put me on to another site displaying the same postcard, the Homestead Museum in the City of Industry. And they even listed the Orange Inn's former address: 2458 Foothill Blvd.

Now comes the sad part: I looked the address up on Google Maps' Streetview feature and compared the ridgeline in the backgrounds of the above photo and the post card, and got this approximate view of the site:

Well, at least you can probably still get orange juice at that Mobil station....

While the Orange Inn is long gone, a few other orange stands still stand today! Including one in Florida!