McDonald’s opened in California 85 years ago — as BBQ spot

Thursday was the 85th anniversary of a sizzling moment in San Bernardino history: the May 15, 1940 opening of McDonald’s.

Not McDonald’s as we know it. But still McDonald’s.

Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald had launched a drive-in restaurant, The Airdrome, in Monrovia in 1937 out of an octagonal building. Three years later they picked the building up and moved it to San Bernardino, placing it on a lot on the southwest corner of 14th and E streets.

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It was this McDonald’s that debuted 85 years ago at 1396 N. E St. The restaurant, called “a drive-in cafe” in a May 1940 news clipping, had a jukebox and a cigarette machine. Also, a barbecue pit. There was no seating. Food was brought to your car.

“Carhops donning satin majorette uniforms delivered patrons barbecued ribs, beef and pork sandwiches, hamburgers, milkshakes and other items,” wrote The Press-Enterprise’s Jacquie Paul in a 1999 story.

What, no McFlurries?

The story chronicled a 1999 reunion of 1940s employees that took place at the museum on the site of the original restaurant.

Dottie Gladwill, photographed in 1999, holds a photograph of herself from 1940 when she was a carhop at the original, pre-fast food McDonald’s in San Bernardino. (File photo by Mark Zaleski, Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Dottie Gladwill, then in her late 70s, told the P-E that she was a carhop on opening day. Her first customer ordered a hamburger and a chocolate malt. Gladwill, who was nervous, grabbed the malt too quickly and spilled it down the front of her uniform.

Soda jerk John Woolard said he worked opening day too, hired on the spot hours earlier after proving to Maurice McDonald that he could whip up shakes and malts.

After eight years in San Bernardino, the McDonald brothers decided to focus on hamburgers and quick service. After revamping their kitchen for maximum efficiency and booting the carhops, their new McDonald’s reopened on Dec. 22, 1948.

A full-page ad in The Sun that day announced “the spectacular opening of the first ‘drive-in hamburger bar’ in America!”

This McDonald’s was a sensation. So much so that in 1953, that original octagonal structure was demolished and replaced by a larger building: the first golden-arches style McDonald’s. And that building, in turn, was razed in 1972, replaced by — boo! — an office.

Albert Okura, then the owner of the First Original McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino, holds a plaque in 2019 commemorating the site’s history. Okura had already replaced two stolen plaques when this one was returned. (File photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

But the 1950s McDonald’s sign remains in place, and the office behind it is famously an unofficial McDonald’s museum.

And the first step toward McDonald’s came 85 years ago. Eat a sandwich, or spill a chocolate malt on yourself, in its memory.