Abstract
Travel 62 miles east of Los Angeles and you will find an epicenter of global mobility. Colton, a small 16-square-mile city in San Bernardino County, has been a principal rail and logistics hub since its establishment in the late 19th century. More than 110 cargo trains pass through the city daily, and it sits amidst the many warehouses of the Inland Empire region that store imports before their distribution locally and nationwide. But for Colton’s communities of color, especially its Latino residents, these transportation systems have long been a double-edged sword — offering employment opportunities while also enforcing stark racial and spatial divides. Railroad tracks historically split the city in two: white, affluent North Colton and working-class, Latino South Colton. In the 1940s, when state officials began planning the San Bernardino Freeway/Interstate 10 route, the proposed alignment threatened to deepen these divisions and further marginalize South Colton. This storymap looks into the nearly decade of heated debate that ultimately led to a route that minimized direct displacement and racial impact — a rare outcome in freeway planning of the era, driven largely by cost considerations.
