Why Colima Road matters.
Colima Road is a cosmopolitan corridor where Rowland Heights's foothill character meets the commercial spine that became one of the eastern San Gabriel Valley's most consequential centers of Chinese and broader Asian American life.
Running through Rowland Heights between Hacienda Heights and Diamond Bar, the major arterial follows the northern foot of the Puente Hills across Fullerton Road, Nogales Street and Fairway Drive, with commercial centers spreading eastward beneath residential slopes toward Brea Canyon Road and the Orange County hills. Long shopping-center frontages create an intensely commercial middle section around Fullerton Road and Nogales Street. Southbound streets rise quickly from the arterial into neighborhoods occupying the Lower Puente Hills. The roadway's eastern reaches approach increasingly pronounced ridgelines as the San Gabriel Valley narrows toward the Diamond Bar gateway. The result is an unusually legible cross-section of Rowland Heights, connecting dense commercial blocks, ascending residential terrain and the Puente Hills along one continuous route.
What defines Colima Road.
Colima Road is best known for crossing terrain that remained agricultural long after much of metropolitan Los Angeles had entered its suburban era. Rowland Heights developed principally on the eastern portion of Rancho La Puente, the enormous Mexican land grant associated with John Rowland and William Workman after their arrival from New Mexico in 1841. Governor Juan B. Alvarado issued preliminary title in 1842, and Governor Pío Pico expanded the grant to 48,790 acres and formally added Workman as co-owner in 1845. Rowland and Workman built a diversified agricultural operation encompassing cattle, sheep, wheat, grapes, fruit, wine and brandy. The partners divided their holdings during the nineteenth century, leaving Rowland with territory that included most of the future community bearing his name. Severe weather helped drive agricultural adaptation as flooding and drought damaged livestock operations and encouraged greater emphasis on crops. Rowland's heirs retained substantial acreage after his 1873 death, slowing wholesale subdivision across portions of the eastern rancho. Citrus groves, grazing land and large rural parcels survived deep into the twentieth century. Basque sheepherders were still tending flocks on acreage along the future commercial corridor during the 1960s, an extraordinary survival of pastoral land use beside a metropolis already spreading across the surrounding valleys. Housing tracts and commercial construction subsequently absorbed much of that open land, carrying Rowland Heights through one of the most dramatic physical changes in its history.
Immigration and entrepreneurship gave the arterial a completely different significance during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Chinese American settlement expanding eastward through the San Gabriel Valley reached Rowland Heights with particular force during the 1980s and 1990s. Taiwanese immigrants formed a major component of this population, joined by residents and business owners with roots in Hong Kong, mainland China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines. By 1992, the commercial landscape between Azusa Avenue and Nogales Street supported Chinese bookstores, bakeries, restaurants, markets and other businesses serving a multilingual regional clientele. Taiwanese culinary businesses were sufficiently concentrated for contemporary observers to distinguish Rowland Heights from the older Cantonese traditions associated with Los Angeles Chinatown. Commercial expansion continued eastward as shopping centers along Colima became anchors for immigrant enterprise across the southeastern San Gabriel Valley. By 1996, a one-mile section of the arterial had developed a conspicuous concentration of Asian businesses, coinciding with major demographic change in surrounding residential neighborhoods. The corridor subsequently matured into a regional destination for Chinese dining, grocery retail and professional services, with Korean and other Asian businesses adding further depth to its commercial composition. Colima Road became a physical record of the eastward movement of Asian American communities through suburban Los Angeles County, placing international foodways and commerce within the shopping-center form that had accompanied Rowland Heights's postagricultural development.
How Colima Road fits.
Colima Road works as the anchor for a Rowland Heights outing connecting protected Puente Hills terrain, a major center of Humanistic Buddhism and a surviving residence from the Mexican rancho that preceded the modern community.
Begin at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park, whose origins reach into a 589-acre public acquisition at Azusa Avenue and Colima Road during the 1970s. Bixby Corporation donated 250 acres toward the property, then known as Otterbein Park, and Los Angeles County assembled the remainder with state support. The park later received its present name and became contiguous with Powder Canyon, linking recreational land with the larger conservation effort across the Puente Hills. Protection expanded after opposition defeated a development proposal threatening Powder Canyon, followed by the habitat authority's first land purchase there in 1996. Continue to Hsi Lai Temple, founded under Venerable Master Hsing Yun's Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order after an effort that began in Southern California during the 1970s. Planning for the Hacienda Heights complex passed through six public hearings and 135 coordination meetings before construction commenced in 1986. Five grains from India, sand from the Ganges and soil from Fo Guang Shan Monastery were incorporated into the Main Shrine foundation. Buddha statues were consecrated in July 1988, and the full complex was inaugurated that November. Its fifteen-acre hilltop campus became Fo Guang Shan's first major overseas branch and an important American center of Humanistic Buddhism. Conclude at John Rowland Mansion, the 1855 Greek Revival residence constructed for pioneer John A. Rowland and his second wife, Charlotte. Bricks made by Los Angeles brickmaker Joseph Mullaly formed a house now recognized as Southern California's oldest surviving brick building. Three generations of Rowland descendants occupied the property into the twentieth century, and the residence entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. A community-backed rehabilitation preceded its reopening in July 2024, returning public attention to one of the few surviving structures directly associated with the family whose name endures across Rowland Heights. The progression moves from preservation of the region's natural terrain through the establishment of a major transpacific religious institution and culminates in surviving architecture from the nineteenth-century rancho.
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