How did Rancho Cucamonga get its name? No, not from a prank.
The subject came up in my column about the first mayor, Jim Frost, who recently retired from public life. We talked about the effort that led to November 1977’s successful cityhood election. I asked where the name Rancho Cucamonga came from.
Frost recalled that when San Bernardino County officials needed a name for the election paperwork, the incorporation leaders suggested Rancho Cucamonga. The name hadn’t been formally decided or voted upon, he said.
That shorthand version got a rebuttal.
“Actually, the proposal to name the city was a bit more formal,” Gil Junkunc told me. He and Al Cherbak made up the City Name Committee, which reported to the Executive Committee of the Tri-Communities Incorporation Committee.
You can tell the incorporation effort was serious based on the internal bureaucracy.
Why Tri-Communities? The city would be made up of the unincorporated communities of Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda.
Junkunc sent me the Naming Committee’s February 1976 report recommending the name Rancho Cucamonga, with Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda remaining “as separate districts or suburbs of Rancho Cucamonga.”
Suburbs within suburbs! The mind reels.
Not everyone was on board. Reader Charles Bentley recalls that for many years after cityhood, “Alta Loma Alone” bumper stickers were still on cars around town.
Five months after the Naming Committee’s recommendation, names were still being batted around, according to a July 1976 Daily Report story.
In an attempt to not leave anyone out, or maybe just for fun, the name Altacucawanda was proposed. Also, Cualtawanda and Etimonga. Less of a mouthful was Ace, which used the first letter of each name.
Other contenders included Iomosa, Red Hill City, Tricity, Tres Pueblos, Chaffey Hills, Cucamonga Rancho and Bennysville, an homage to radio comic Jack Benny.
I’ll segue here to a question from reader Sylvia McIndoo of Murrieta.
“As a former resident of Upland beginning in 1933 until 1959, in reading your article about Rancho Cucamonga I am curious to know if you know where the name Cucamonga came from? It became well known back in radio days of course from ‘The Jack Benny Show,’ which spoke of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga – and always made us laugh…If it is a Native American word (or maybe Spanish), it surely must have a meaning.”
According to Don Clucas’ history tome “Light Over the Mountain,” Cucamonga was the name given to the area by the Gabrielino tribe, under several spellings including “Kukomo-nga.”
“The meaning of the name has been a source for disagreement for quite a long time,” Clucas wrote. The accepted interpretations have been “Sandy Place,” “Place of Many Springs” or “The Place of the Light Over the Mountain.” Clucas may or may not side with the latter, but he seems to have realized that “Light Over the Mountain” was a more commercial title for his book than “Sandy Place.”
The original Spanish land-grant name for the area in the 1840s was Rancho Cucamonga, making the name historically accurate, Frost told me. He still thinks it was the best choice.
Opponents told the Daily Report in November 1976: “Cucamonga has a funny sound. Why do you suppose Jack Benny used it on his radio and TV shows?”
A friend who grew up in Covina in the ’70s tells me: “As kids we thought Cucamonga was a made-up name for a made-up place. It sounds so funny. We used to run around chanting that name ‘coo-coo-MON-ga.’”
McIndoo always felt Cucamonga was putting on airs by adding Rancho: “I thought the folks there were trying to improve upon just Cucamonga, which is a kind of a kooky word and name – as is Temecula out in this area (there were even stickers on cars saying ‘Where the Hell is Temecula’).”
Benny, by the way, may have popularized the pronunciation that most of us use, with Cucamonga beginning like “coo.” I’ve met old-timers who still say the name with a “cyew” sound, like “cucumber.”
An incorporation leader, Catherine Bridge — whose husband, Art, was an early council member — compiled her files of news clippings and documents into a privately published book in 2007. That’s where I found the Daily Report stories cited above.
She told me at a council meeting that year that Benny’s jokes about the city had caused a split between those upset that he’d made the name “an international joke” and those who thought he’d given them a leg up.
“We couldn’t even begin to pay a good public relations man who could get as much free publicity as we already get because of that name,” supporter Al Blessent told the Report in 1976.
After Junkunc contacted me, I paged through the book’s chronological clippings twice. You’d think there would have been a story about the name Rancho Cucamonga having been officially selected. If there was, I didn’t see it.
In November 1976, or nine months after Junkunc says the matter was settled, the Tri-Communities Committee told the newspaper: “‘Rancho Cucamonga’ is the first name among several that undoubtedly will be proposed as election time approaches.”
Most news stories simply referred to the Tri-Communities. The first reference to Rancho Cucamonga being the proposed name was in the minutes of a July 1977 Board of Supervisors meeting about the incorporation petition.
Almost as if, as Frost said, someone had been forced to pick a name and fill it in on the paperwork.
brIEfly
Barbara Drake, a member of the local Tongva community, the descendants of the Gabrielinos, died Nov. 18 at age 80. The Colton woman promoted the use of native plants in appearances at cultural events throughout the region and to students at Claremont’s Pitzer College. You or your children, or grandchildren, may have heard her explaining life as it was lived by the people who were here before us. I met her at Rancho Cucamonga’s Rains House in 2003. For the record, she told me she didn’t know what “Cucamonga” meant, although she leaned toward the “sandy place” definition.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sandy, er, Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
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