Downtown San Bernardino Hosts the 13th Route 66 Rendezvous

Downtown San Bernardino will fill with 1,200-plus classic cars on Saturday, October 10, 2026, for the 13th Annual Rendezvous Back to Route 66. The San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting the street show from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., with the city as co-sponsor, on E Street and Court Street.

Organizers are tying the day to two anniversaries at once: 35 years of Rendezvous history, and 100 years since Route 66 was commissioned on November 11, 1926. The cars will roll into a downtown that once ran a four-day festival across 35 blocks, then watched that version fall apart after California shut down redevelopment agencies and the city filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Downtown San Bernardino Closes Streets on October 10

Registration is open for the 13th Annual Rendezvous Back to Route 66, limited to 1999 custom vehicles and older, plus motorcycles. Bicycles are out. Any other entry has to be approved in advance. Spectators do not pay at the curb; the show is built as a free downtown day with food booths, craft vendors, live music, and two beer gardens.

The meeting point is E Street and Court Street, with a cruise loop of about 1.3 miles through the old core. Free public parking rings the site, including county lots off 3rd and 5th Streets and the structure at 2nd and E. The Carousel Mall lot is closed, and the Superior Court lot is off limits to the public.

City copy on the city’s Route 66 centennial calendar says the annual draw is 1,200-plus classic vehicles, live entertainment, food vendors, and thousands of spectators, and that “the 2026 edition promises to be the biggest yet.” The Chamber office at 546 W. 6th Street is the business address behind the show, not the display grid. The phone line is (909) 885-7515.

The Mother Road Turns 100 on November 11

Route 66 opened as a numbered U.S. highway on November 11, 1926, stretching about 2,400 miles across eight states from Chicago to Santa Monica. Only about a third of that mileage was paved at the start. In San Bernardino the city says Mt. Vernon Avenue and 5th Street became the local “Main Street of America” once the road was fully paved in 1938.

The highway was dropped from the U.S. system in the 1980s, which is why the remaining business is nostalgia, motels, and car shows. State tourism planners have already published a list of California’s Route 66 centennial events, with official national festivities dated from April 30, 2026, and the highway’s own birthday on November 11. That statewide list names Ontario’s Euclid Avenue Cruisin’ Reunion, a Victorville street party, Barstow’s Main Street USA Festival, and a film screening at San Bernardino’s California Theatre. It does not name the Rendezvous.

San Bernardino still got some of the rolling traffic. Vintage cars in the Hemmings Great Race spent a night at San Manuel Stadium in June after a run down E Street, the same corridor locals used to cruise from the 1940s through the 1970s. The Chamber show on October 10 is the downtown date that tries to turn that memory into a full day of parked chrome.

300 Cars at Glen Helen Grew Into a Four-Day Festival

The first Rendezvous was a one-day gathering at Glen Helen Regional Park in 1990, with 300 classic cars and 4,000 spectators, put on with help from the Over the Hill Gang. After a stop at the National Orange Show, the event moved downtown in 1992 and became the thing older residents still describe when they say “Rendezvous”: a multi-day street takeover, not a Saturday display.

Organizers now write that the peak years spanned four days and 35 city blocks, with more than 2,000 classic vehicles and hundreds of thousands of visitors. Stater Bros. Markets, led then by chairman Jack Brown, became title sponsor in 1997. Brown later put the grocer’s mix of cash, printing, volunteer time, and concessions at about $600,000, and he argued the gates should stay free and the show should stay in San Bernardino.

PEAK YEARS AND THE 2026 SHOW

Those two columns are the whole plot. The 2026 poster still sells “Where It All Began,” with a 1926 Ford, a 1955 Ford truck, a 1964 Buick Wildcat, and a sunset over Cajon Summit. The map under the cars is smaller than the one people remember.

How Redevelopment Money Took the Festival With It

California dissolved redevelopment agencies on January 1, 2012. San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy on August 1, 2012. The Rendezvous had used redevelopment money for cleanup and security on streets that needed a heavy police presence, and City Hall no longer had that extra pot. Mayor Pat Morris said the city simply had no capacity to keep helping, given the budget and the filing.

The 2012 show still went on, September 13 through 16, after organizers scrambled for donations to cover police and trash. In February 2013, Jim Gerstenslager, then chairman of the Convention and Visitors Bureau board, announced the original event was done.

It was a gut-wrenching decision that we had to make, but we just didn’t have the resources to put it on this year.

Jim Gerstenslager, chairman, San Bernardino Convention and Visitors Bureau board, February 2013

The bureau that produced the show was winding down with it, and the California Welcome Center went too. In the months after the filing the city shed 285 employees, nearly one in four of the workforce. Ontario launched a renamed Route 66 Cruisin’ Reunion on Euclid Avenue that same year. Visit California now lists that Ontario show in its 13th year, with more than 1,000 cars and concerts, which is the production scale San Bernardino used to advertise as its own.

THE RENDEZVOUS TIMELINE

1. 1990: First show at Glen Helen Regional Park, 300 cars and 4,000 spectators.
2. 1992: The Rendezvous moves into downtown San Bernardino.
3. 1997: Stater Bros. becomes title sponsor of the growing street festival.
4. January 1, 2012: California’s redevelopment agencies shut down.
5. August 1, 2012: San Bernardino files for bankruptcy.
6. September 13-16, 2012: The original downtown festival stages its last edition.
7. February 2013: The Convention and Visitors Bureau cancels the 2013 show.
8. 2013: The Chamber keeps a smaller Rendezvous alive; Ontario starts its own Route 66 reunion.
9. 2015: The Chamber version returns to downtown streets after two years at San Manuel Stadium.
10. 2020: The show takes a pandemic year off, then resumes in 2021.
11. October 10, 2026: 13th Annual Rendezvous Back to Route 66, billed with the highway centennial.

The bankruptcy case itself closed in 2022, which is why City Hall can co-sponsor a street festival again. The four-day machine that needed redevelopment cash did not come back with the court’s stamp.

Volunteers Brought the Cars Back to E Street

The Chamber stepped in during 2013 rather than let the name go dark. Early revivals sat at San Manuel Stadium, which Judi Penman, the Chamber’s president and CEO, later said the car people disliked because they wanted to cruise E Street. The 2015 return downtown was the first time in three years the show had been back on those blocks, and the field was still rebuilding, with counts in that period running from hundreds of cars toward the 1,000 mark.

Penman has been the through-line. She is still listed as president and CEO on the Chamber’s 2024 tax filing, and she is still the person handing out member plaques at Chamber breakfasts in 2026. The group is small. The same filing shows two employees and revenue of about $150,000, which is not the old visitors-bureau machine, and it is the budget reality behind a one-day show.

Rather than allowing one of San Bernardino’s signature events to become a part of history, the San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce stepped forward to keep the tradition alive.

Rendezvous Back to Route 66 organizers, official event site

That 2026 history text is honest about the shrink. “The event may look different today than it did during its largest years,” the organizers wrote, while still counting the Glen Helen picnic, the 35-block years, and the Chamber Saturdays as one 35-year story. Skip 2020 for the pandemic and the numbering lands on a 13th annual in 2026, which is how a rescue operation gets billed as a continuous tradition.

What Spectators Will Find on the Cruise Loop

The practical sheet is short, and it is the part that actually gets a family onto E Street. Bring walking shoes. The loop is made for slow passes and parked rows, not a race. Last year’s rebuilt shows already mixed hot rods, lowriders, trucks, and stock restorations; 2026 entries can be any custom vehicle from 1999 or earlier.

HOW TO SHOW UP ON OCTOBER 10

• Hours: Saturday, October 10, 2026, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on E Street and Court Street.
• Who can enter a vehicle: 1999 custom vehicles and older, all motorcycles, no bicycles; other types need pre-approval.
• Parking: Free around the site, including county lots on 3rd and 5th and the 2nd and E structure; Carousel Mall and Superior Court lots are closed to the public.
• On the ground: Two beer gardens, local food vendors, craft booths, and live entertainment aimed at families as well as car clubs.
• Contact: San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce, (909) 885-7515, with a downloadable registration form on the official show site.

People who still talk about the old Rendezvous talk about sitting next to a car for three days. This version is a single long Saturday. That is the trade the Chamber made to keep the streets closed at all.

Wigwams, a Burger Museum, and a Bridge Party

The city is using the centennial to point visitors at landmarks that never needed a Chamber permit. Wigwam Village No. 7 on the Register still rents 20 concrete teepee rooms at 2728 Foothill Boulevard, a Frank Redford motel built from 1947 to 1949 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 after the Patel family bought it in 2002 and rebuilt it from a rough state. Of seven Wigwam Villages, three remain, two of them on Route 66.

The Historic Original McDonald’s Museum at 1398 N. E Street sits on the lot where Richard and Maurice McDonald recast their stand in 1948 around burgers, fries, and shakes. Juan Pollo founder Albert Okura later turned the site into an unofficial museum, open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The California Historic Route 66 Association notes that the museum is not actually part of Route 66 history. The city still pairs it with the Wigwam on the centennial page anyway, because both are the roadside story San Bernardino wants told.

A separate city date lands first. The Mt. Vernon Bridge block party runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 26, 2026, marking one year since the bridge reopened and doubling as a centennial crowd-puller. City staff expect more than 2,000 attendees and 40 vendors, including more than 20 food booths, with the bridge closed between 2nd Street and 5th Street from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. In a September 24 notice, the city called that party the first of two major Route 66 centennial celebrations it is planning this fall, leading to a Veterans Salute and parade on November 7. The Chamber’s October 10 car show sits between those two city dates as a co-sponsored guest.

SAN BERNARDINO’S FALL ROUTE 66 DATES

Registration for the car show is already open, and the streets are already on the calendar. The highway’s own 100th birthday is still a month after the last engine cools on Court Street.