At the crossing where the Pacific Electric Trail meets Milliken Avenue, there is a squat concrete marker about knee high, the kind you glance at for the arrow and forget by the next block. It tells you which way the trail continues and how far to the next cross street. Thousands of people pass it every week on the way to Central Park or the Epicenter or just out for a lap before work. Nobody stops to look at it because there has never been anything to look at.
That is about to change, and the reason why says more about how Rancho Cucamonga is building toward its 50th anniversary than anything the city has announced so far.
The mural project nobody's heard of yet
In August 2026, the City of Rancho Cucamonga opened a request for qualifications inviting artists to design and paint the cement directional markers along the Pacific Electric Trail. The scope is specific: three intersections, starting with two markers at Milliken Avenue and at least one at Rochester Avenue, each about 18 inches wide and 36 inches tall, plus the flat top of the marker itself. Selected artists get a $1,500 stipend per marker to cover design, fabrication, and installation. Preference goes to artists who live, work, or attend school in Rancho Cucamonga or nearby. Applications close October 22, 2026, or once the city receives 100 of them, whichever comes first.
On paper this reads like routine public art housekeeping. In context, it's the first piece of the city's multi-year anniversary campaign that residents can find along a route they already use.
From a song to a trail marker
Rancho Cucamonga incorporated in 1977, which puts its 50th anniversary in 2027. The city started marking the run-up in 2025, when it debuted an original song and music video called "Livin' Rancho Cucamonga," written with Tony Lucca and Keaton Simons and premiered at that year's State of the City address. Proceeds from downloads benefit the Randall Lewis Second Story and Beyond program, and themed merchandise is sold at the California Welcome Center inside Ontario Mills.
The song and the merchandise give residents ways to celebrate from home or on a trip to Ontario Mills. The mini mural project adds something to a route people already use every day, at intersections the city selected for investment. Residents who want to see the 50th anniversary take physical shape before 2027 arrives can watch the trail this fall, starting with the crossings at Milliken Avenue and Rochester Avenue.
What the trail actually is
The Pacific Electric Trail runs on top of a real railway, not a metaphorical one. It follows part of the old Pacific Electric Railway's San Bernardino Line, the interurban system that once carried bright red electric cars between the Inland Empire and downtown Los Angeles. This segment was built to move the region's citrus crop and was completed in 1914. Passenger service on this stretch ended in the 1940s, freight continued for a few more decades, and the line was fully abandoned and dismantled in the 1980s before being rebuilt as a rail trail.
The full corridor stretches about 21 miles from Claremont to Rialto. The Rancho Cucamonga portion covers roughly 7 to 8 miles, bordered by Upland to the west and Fontana to the east. It's a Class I path, meaning it's separated from car traffic and paved for most of its length, with a softer gravel shoulder in places for equestrian use.
Where it actually takes you
The trail isn't a straight shot through nothing. It runs through Rancho Cucamonga's Central Park, which has playgrounds, a dog park, and looping gravel paths with mountain views. Where it crosses Vineyard Avenue, it connects to the Cucamonga Creek Trail, and about three miles further east it links up with the Deer Creek Bike Path, giving trail users two additional north-south routes into surrounding neighborhoods without leaving the path network.
Further east, in Etiwanda, the trail passes the Isle House, a preserved mansion with its own historical marker, and crosses near the historic Etiwanda Pacific Electric Depot, which served rail passengers until 1941 and handled freight until 1960. The corridor keeps running into Fontana, past the old Art Depot, a converted agricultural freight depot that operated from 1915 to 1961 and now hosts a gallery and public programs. None of this is decoration added for the trail's benefit. It's what was already standing along a working rail line, left in place once the rail line stopped working.
The volunteers who got there first
The city isn't the only one who has put money into this trail. Friends of the Pacific Electric Trail, a 501(c)(3) formed to support the corridor, has raised and contributed more than $70,000 toward trail amenities in Rancho Cucamonga with help from sponsors including REI and Falken Tire. That money has gone toward benches, water fountains, bike racks, trees, dog stations, and landscaping, the unglamorous fixtures that make a seven mile stretch of pavement usable rather than just walkable.
This matters for reading the mural project correctly. The city isn't discovering that the trail deserves investment. A volunteer group has been making that case with donated dollars for years. The mini mural RFQ is the city meeting that precedent with its own budget line, timed to land during the anniversary buildup instead of arriving as a standalone beautification grant.
If you want to apply, or just want to know where to look
The application window runs through October 22, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time, or until the city receives 100 submissions. Selected artists design and paint two sides of the directional marker along with its top surface, working within the $1,500 stipend that covers the full job from concept to installation. The city has said explicitly that it wants designs reflecting local stories, regional landscape, cultural traditions, or personal interpretations of what the city means to the artist, which leaves room for markers at Milliken and Rochester to end up looking nothing alike.
If you're not applying, the more useful thing to know is where to look once the murals start appearing. Milliken Avenue and Rochester Avenue are both high traffic crossings, close to Central Park and the ballpark district, which means they're also the two spots on this trail already worn smooth by the most daily use. Whatever the city intended, that's a reasonable bet on where an anniversary marker is most likely to actually get seen.
The next time you pass that marker at Milliken and it's still plain gray concrete, you'll know exactly what it's waiting on and roughly when to expect it to change.
If you spend enough time on this stretch of Rancho Cucamonga to notice which corner gets its marker painted first, you already know the neighborhood better than most market reports do. Gregory Shipp has been paying attention to this same stretch of the city for a long time. Schedule Free Consultation whenever you want to talk about what's actually happening on the ground here, trail included.
