This California Route 66 Restaurant Outlasted Murders, Fires, And Marilyn Monroe

There's a wall of framed photos at The Sycamore Inn in Rancho Cucamonga, California, that features celebrities who've dined there. Among them is an autographed picture of Marilyn Monroe with an engraved plaque which says she ate there in 1959. Monroe loved several restaurants in California, but The Sycamore Inn was arguably the weirdest.

The menu isn't the weird part. The Sycamore Inn is a steakhouse that serves such dishes as filet mignon, peppercorn steak, and rack of lamb. It also prepares plenty of seafood options, including sake and miso caramelized Chilean sea bass, king crab, and oysters Rockefeller. What's unusual are the folklore and rumors that surround the place. For instance, Elizabeth Short — the Black Dahlia — was said to have gone on a date there a few weeks before she was murdered in January 1947. The Sycamore Inn's history is like something out of a telenovela with scheming villains and a heroine at the mercy of pistol-packing scalawags.

In 1856, 17-year-old Maria Merced Williams inherited a 35,000-acre ranch she didn't know how to manage. Williams would marry gold digger John Rains, who took control of his bride's massive fortune. The ranch ran through Bear Gulch, an important trade route for Spanish explorers and Native Americans. Arkansas native William Rubottom leased a portion of the land from the Rains' along the Santa Fe Trail (later historic Route 66). Rubottom converted an existing adobe building into an inn and tavern that he called Mountain View (now the Sycamore Inn). It became a popular spot for stagecoach travelers. By 1862, Rains had made reckless financial decisions, and on a trip to Los Angeles, he was lassoed and murdered.

John Rains' murderer was never found, but weeks later at the Mountain View, Rubottom overheard a posse of vigilantes blame Maria for her husband's demise and plot her murder. He chased them out with a shotgun and saved Maria's life. With Rains dead, Maria's brother-in-law, Robert Carlisle, forced her to sign everything over to him. She took refuge at a friend's home, but en route, her carriage was shot at, and her chaperone took the bullet instead. He crawled back to the inn, and as he died in Maria's arms, he accused Carlisle of being the assassin. Carlisle was never charged with murder, but in 1865, he was killed in a gun-and-knife fight. Maria couldn't afford the ranch's upkeep and sold it in 1870. Rubottom was chased by the law in and out of California, until his death at age 77 in 1885.

Over the next 40 years, the Mountain View was damaged by fire and flood and rebuilt and eventually purchased in 1920 by citrus grower John Klusman, who built the current-day building, which allegedly served as a brothel and a speakeasy during the Prohibition era. Danish immigrant Irl Hinrichsen purchased the inn in 1939 and after remodeling, renamed it The Sycamore Inn. The inn again changed hands in 2002, and though its current owners have renovated the interior and upgraded the menu to food you'd find at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, you can still get a sense of why gunslingers and celebrities escaped to this historic hideaway.