The Route 66 Roots Of The Iconic Cheeseburger

At least five different people claimed to invent the hamburger as we know it, making for a hazy origin story shrouded in mystery that may never be solved. The cheeseburger's origins are slightly more traceable but no less murky, since there are numerous points on the map that have tried to lay claim as the home of this culinary concept.

Today it's hard to imagine a time before cheeseburgers — for many, a burger isn't complete without a slice of cheese among its toppings. Anecdotes and local lore seem to agree that this celebrated combination was invented sometime between the 1920s and the 1930s, but beyond that, the specifics are up for speculation. The invention was probably inevitable, but there's one place that was sited beside the western end of Route 66 that has strong claims to instigating this burger topping before other eateries. 

Though it's no longer standing, a humble sandwich stand in Pasadena, California proudly claimed the cheeseburger as its creation, and the city continues to celebrate this legacy. Of course, it didn't take long for the phenomenon to become a nationwide delicacy, and the rest is history. 

While hamburgers may be viewed as an all-American food, their origins are believed to trace back to ground meat recipes that German immigrants introduced to the American populace. German meat patties are fairly identical to burger patties, but what distinguished this traditional German fare from the American fast food staple was serving ground beef between pieces of bread. Often called hamburger steak sandwiches in the early days, the appeal for many Americans was that these made for hearty meals that could be eaten on the go.

Hamburgers certainly existed on restaurant menus prior to the 20th century, and were likely offered as a convenient food for state and county fairs in the late 19th century. In New Haven, Connecticut, Louis' Lunch is widely considered as the first hamburger restaurant in the U.S. — the historic eatery's management claims that it has been serving burgers since 1900, and insists that its original owner, Louis Lassen, invented the original hamburger. It is still served there the way Lassen is said to have created it — on sliced bread instead of a bun. 

However, there is neither strong nor sure evidence to back anyone's claims to the origin of the first burger. Hamburgers didn't become a mainstream meal until the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, when this food truly reached a widespread customer base. Legend states that Texan restaurateur Fletcher Davis was the vendor proffering this newfangled delicacy — and adding to the overall confusion, Lone Star state residents adamantly state that Davis was the original creator of the hamburger in the late 1800s. 

Los Angeles, long famous for its car culture, has a storied history of drive-in and drive-thru eateries. The region is, after all, where many beloved fast food chains got their start, including In-N-Out, Bob's Big Boy, and Fatburger. These chains first popped up around LA in the mid-20th century, but the burger stand as a Los Angeles phenomenon got its start much earlier, being well established by the early 1930s. This was when automobile use was on the rise, and LA was beginning its transition from a concentrated downtown hub to the sprawled-out metropolis it is today.  

Roadside eateries were a popular phenomenon during this period, and provided business opportunities for LA's surrounding communities. The hamburger's reputation as a convenience food made it a go-to item for people on the road, and it was on the menu at many sandwich stands catering to drivers heading to and from Downtown LA. In nearby Pasadena, one such roadside eatery — The Rite Spot on Colorado Boulevard — is credited as the very first eatery to serve its customers burgers with cheese. 

The Rite Spot was in the right place at the right time to launch a revolutionary sandwich that would forever change the American dining experience. Located on Pasadena's central Colorado Boulevard — which became a stretch of Route 66 after the legendary highway was established in 1926 — The Rite Spot is renowned as the site where cheeseburgers came into being back in 1924, just in time to feed motorists on The Mother Road. Though numerous tales recount how the cheeseburger was invented here, and little proof substantiates whichever story may be true, all of the accounts center around one enterprising young businessman, Lionel Sternberger. 

Pasadena officials have determined that The Rite Spot was a family business, and that Sternberger — whose last name may have destined his legacy of fast food glory — worked there flipping burgers for his father. As the story goes, in 1924, when Sternberger was just 16 years old, he hastily came up with an idea to hide scorch marks on a burned beef patty — adding a slice of cheese. The result was a hit, and word of mouth quickly transformed The Rite Spot into a place where customers could order the original burger with cheese. Over the years that followed, countless other eateries along Route 66 followed suit by serving cheeseburgers — including the famous Oklahoma onion burger of the Depression era.

An early Pasadena Post article tells a very different version of the cheeseburger origin story, stating that "L.C. Sternberger" was 24 when he visited a Pasadena soft-drink stand in 1927 while humoring a hitchhiker who wanted to stop there. Seeing the potential in the roadside eatery's location, Sternberger allegedly ended up trading his car for the stand. Not long after becoming owner, Sternberger's cheeseburger creation might have been in response to a drifter who'd just acquired 15 cents and excitedly ordered a burger topped with everything possible, including some sliced cheese on hand. The cheese-topped burger went on to become a menu highlight, known as the Aristocratic Burger. 

Old Rite Spot menus from the Pasadena Museum of History archives validate that this cheeseburger prototype was indeed a fixture at the eatery, and cost a mere 15 cents. Whether this was the case in the 1920s, however, is difficult to prove. The Aristocratic Burger was certainly on the menu by the 1930s — the archived menus were printed by a local press that went out of business in 1939. These extant sources, however, more likely belonged to a brick-and-mortar Rite Spot restaurant, as the sandwich stand expanded into new locations by 1931. It is the Pasadena Post article that remains the most tangible proof of the city's claim to the cheeseburger's place of origin. 

The Rite Spot became known locally as the place to go for burgers served with cheese, but it was not the only restaurant in the LA area that served this popular delicacy. O'Dell's restaurant in Downtown LA also served cheeseburgers in the 1920s, and is one of the few eateries which has left a paper trail through the surviving copies of some old menus. These reveal that in 1928, the restaurant offered a cheeseburger on a bun for 15 cents. In addition to this classic, O'Dell's offered a variety of other cheeseburger variations — including cheeseburgers covered with chili and spaghetti — though it's unclear if these menu items were served on a bun.

These latter variants didn't really catch on with mainstream foodie culture at the time, but the inclusion of cheeseburgers of any kind on a menu before 1930 keeps the origins of this dish well within the LA region. Without tangible proof that the Pasadena origin stories spanning 1924 and 1927 are true, O'Dell's may actually have been the first eatery to become known for a cheeseburger offered by that name. 

Though anecdotal evidence and surviving documentation both point to LA generally — and Pasadena specifically — as the origin of cheese on burgers, an eatery in Louisville, Kentucky remains steadfast in its belief that it can rightfully claim to be the cheeseburger's originator. Kaelin's restaurant opened in 1934, and it has a cherished legacy around being the birthplace of the cheeseburger, having listed this item on its menu since the eatery's earliest days. Nonetheless, the 1928 menu from O'Dell's in LA clearly lists the cheeseburger as one of its signature sandwiches, putting LA at least six years ahead of Louisville in terms of laying claim to the cheeseburger's origin. 

Even so, the remodeled version of Kaelin's — called 80/20 @ Kaelin's — proudly boasts a plaque declaring that it became the birthplace of the cheeseburger in 1934. While this may not be accurate, the restaurant is at least known for another first in fast food. Kaelin's original owners, Carl and Margaret Kaelin, were known to be friends of Colonel Harland Sanders, and their restaurant claims to be the first to sell his special-recipe fried chicken before he went on to establish Kentucky Fried Chicken, as well as the lesser-known Colonel Sanders restaurant you can still visit in Shelbyville, Kentucky. 

Louis Ballast, the proprietor of Denver's Humpty Dumpty Barrel Drive-In, was certainly not the first to cook up cheeseburgers for his customers, but he is known as the first person to claim ownership of the meaty specialty's name. Historians agree that in 1935, Ballast obtained a trademark for the cheeseburger — giving him exclusive rights to use that title, though he apparently never followed through with enforcing this when other restaurants started listing cheeseburgers on menus. Nevertheless, this trademark gave Humpty Dumpty Barrel some claim to this all-American invention. 

Funnily enough, cheese was only one of multiple garnishes Ballast experimented with before he settled on adding cheeseburgers to his menu. He also cooked up burgers topped with chocolate and peanut butter, which were not as well received by clients during a series of taste tests. Fortunately for everyone, Ballast settled on cheese, and his claim to the cheeseburger trademark has kept Denver's name in the race amongst fast food firsts. Though the original restaurant no longer stands, an engraved stone monument marks the Humpty Dumpty Barrel location, highlighting its association with the cheeseburger and specifying that this was Denver's first drive-in eatery. 

Connecticut is home to Louis' Lunch — one of the first eateries to serve hamburgers — but this is not the state's only restaurant that played a foundational role in the evolution of burgers. The dates are not definitively known, but Jack's Lunch in Middletown, Connecticut is recognized as the originator of a different kind of burger with cheese — the steamed cheeseburger. These were unique for being formed into square-shaped patties and steam-cooked in a metal box.

Local lore states that Jack's Lunch opened sometime in the 1920s, and was serving steamed cheeseburgers by the 1930s. While this vague time frame might put Jack's in the running for contributing to the origin story of cheeseburgers, other restaurants with better documentation are more likely to deserve credit for actually creating the specialty. Jack's called them by different names too, such as the "hot cheese steamed hamburg" or the "cheeseburg," according to Happiness Archive. The restaurant is no longer standing, but steamed cheeseburgers remain a unique Connecticut delicacy, and are certainly worth trying. 

Local pride makes up for any lack of official documentation, and Pasadena has embraced its role in cheeseburger history, with locals celebrating this delicacy in a variety of ways. Every January since 2012, the city has hosted Pasadena Cheeseburger Week, when the community's restaurants offer specials and unique versions of this iconic dish.

In 2017, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce made the city's claim to cheeseburger history official, placing a commemorative plaque at the location of the original Rite Spot on Colorado Boulevard, which is still part of the westernmost stretch of Route 66. Keeping the 1924 version of the origin story alive, the city celebrated a Cheeseburger Centennial in 2024, which included voting for the best burger in town. Restaurants across Pasadena offered new cheeseburger specialties for the occasion. Among the most luxurious creations was the Langham Huntington hotel's $100 Royal Royce Burger, with a patty made of short rib and brisket jazzed up with raclette fondue and topped with decadent fixings, including gold leaf and lobster tail. 

No matter where the cheeseburger came from or when it was first served, it remains a beloved, delicious, and slightly mythical staple on menus across the United States and worldwide. Not to be confused with National Hamburger Day celebrations, which take place every May, National Cheeseburger Day has also become an annual American tradition, honored nationwide on September 18. 

Celebrating National Cheeseburger Day is easy to do. Many restaurants offer special promotions for the occasion, and encourage customers to try more unusual versions of burgers than they might typically order. But of course, the classic cheeseburger needs no innovation to delight the taste buds. As PBS reports, Americans enthusiastically consume burgers all year long, scarfing down an estimated 50 billion burgers each year, which breaks down to about three burgers a week — many of which are served with cheese. This is proof enough that the combination is a timeless classic, and that there's certainly no excuse needed to enjoy a cheeseburger — any occasion is a good one.