Fullerton’s Metrolink Station Is the City’s Past, Present and Pulse
- Joel Beers
- Nov 3
- 9 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
Where historic depots meet bustling streets, Fullerton’s station connects the city’s rail-born roots with its constantly renewing downtown.
This story is a part of our series OC by Metrolink, discovering what what makes each stop worth the stop.
Each of the 11 Metrolink stations on the Orange County Line – and the cities they serve – has its own deep-seated history with the railroad. Some, like Anaheim and Santa Ana, were already established communities before the first railway arrived in the 1870s. Others, such as Buena Park and Lake Forest/Mission Viejo, disappeared from the rail map for decades before being revived with Metrolink’s expansion. Still others – Orange, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente – were shaped by the rails that ran through their hearts.
But no city in Orange County owes its very existence, growth and ongoing vitality to the railroad quite like Fullerton.
The City That Trains Made
In the spring of 1887, brothers George and Edward Amerige, newcomers from Massachusetts, purchased 430 acres of land north of Anaheim. The following year, they persuaded George Fullerton, the local land agent for the Santa Fe Railway, to route the new Los Angeles-to-Orange line through their property.
That decision created a city. Fullerton’s location proved ideal – strategically positioned where goods, produce and passengers could move east through Santa Ana Canyon, west to Los Angeles, or south toward San Diego. By the mid-1920s, four separate railways converged in Fullerton, and the city boasted three depots. Oil from nearby fields, citrus from local groves, and passengers bound for destinations near and far all passed through the growing town.
As Fullerton expanded – slowly at first, then rapidly after World War II – it did so around the stations that had birthed it. Its high school, junior college, city hall, police station, library, first churches and many of its most significant structures, like the Fox Fullerton Theatre and the Chapman Building, were all built close to the stations.
Today, more rail traffic rolls through Fullerton than any other station in the county, some 150 trains. About 50 are Amtrak and Metrolink trains, heading north and south on the OC Line or east on the 91/Perris Valley and Inland Empire/OC lines. The rest are freight trains that don’t just pass through Fullerton, they pass through time zones. The cargo that rattles through the Fullerton depot – containers stacked high and humming, originating at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports – might be bound for Barstow, the Midwest, the Gulf of Mexico or the East Coast. The steel ribbons that built Fullerton’s fortune still carry the commerce of a nation.
One of three train depots still standing in downtown Fullerton, the one still operating as a station was built in 1930, and includes an Amtrak ticket office and a cafe. PHOTOS 1 & 2: Fullerton is the busiest train station in Orange County, and among the busiest of Metrolink's 69 stations on its seven lines. PHOTO 3: Amtrak's ticket office at the Fullerton Transportation Center is one of the few in Southern California with an enclosed waiting room. PHOTO 4: The Fullerton Train Museum is a volunteer organization open the first and third Saturdays of every month. It features several vintage rail cars that were used for passenger transportation, including a 1940s Union Pacific lounge car and a 1951 Santa Fe streamlined sleeping car. Photos by Joel Beers, Culture OC
From Sleepy to Spirited
Downtown Fullerton has seen as many transformations as the rail lines that ran through it.
By the mid-1980s, after the postwar boom faded, downtown had become nearly deserted after dark. Pawn shops, thrift stores and antique shops dominated during the day and there were only a small handful of bars at night. Then a sort of rebirth occurred, with independent bookstores, coffeehouses and art galleries beginning to fill empty storefronts, attracting a creative crowd.
Then came the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the city exploded into a nightlife hotspot. Publications dubbed it Bourbon Street West for its boisterous bar scene. The energy was undeniable, though not always peaceful, and weekend chaos sometimes – no, make that routinely – spilled into the streets.
Over time, things mellowed. With stricter regulations, shifting tastes and a maturing downtown identity, the district has evolved again. Today, it’s still lively, but more balanced – a blend of dining, culture and nightlife that reflects the city’s layered personality.
PHOTO 1: A restaurant since the the early 1980s and currently home to Hopscotch Tavern, this building was Pacific Electric Railway's train depot in Fullerton, which opened in 1918. It was one of three train stations that currently stand in downtown. PHOTO 2: In a downtown with no shortage of restaurants and TVs, the 27 TVs on the walls and patio of Roscoe's Famous Deli are the most. Photos by Joel Beers, Culture OC
A Feast Around the Station
Counting the number of bars, restaurants and cafés within a short walk of the station is almost impossible – new ones appear as fast as old ones close – some with the names of the old places still up. Many have reduced their hours, some are only open on Friday and Saturday nights and others are transitioning from bars/restaurants to special event venues.
And then there are several vacancies, like the former Capri Shoes (not a restaurant), La Vida Nostra and Café Mo Mo along Harbor and Commonwealth.
But, starting at the intersection of Lemon and Commonwealth, located on the northwestern corner of the Fullerton Transportation Center, which includes the train station and bus bays, there are some 75 establishments within 10 walking minutes of the train station that serve food, drinks desserts or sweets, most of them licensed to serve alcohol. To put it another way: If you ate or drank in just one downtown Fullerton solid food and liquid libation purveyor a day, it would take nearly three months to wind through.
Other than a small cluster at Lemon and Commonwealth informally known as Little Tokyo, there’s no predictable pattern to the mix. Indian next to Italian, sports bars/delis next to pub grub on steroids and Irish pubs next to country-western saloons. There is Mediterranean and Middle Eastern to high-end Mexican and tacos sold until 3:30 a.m.; crepes to kickin’ crabs; plant-based Mexi-Cal to steaks; breweries, breakfast cafes, British pubs and bakeries; pizza restaurants, pizzerias and pizza parlors; Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken, Southern-fried chicken and waffles and chicken.
Amid the sheer number and constant turnover, some of Fullerton’s oldest restaurants remain pillars: The Cellar (1969), Rutabegorz (founded in 1971), and Mulberry Street Ristorante (1984).
And remarkably, the chains are few. Aside from a McDonald’s and a Domino’s, nearly every downtown eatery is independently owned – a rarity in Southern California (although a few restaurants, like Wahoo’s and El Farolito, have other locations in the county). Even the Starbucks that once anchored the corner of Harbor and Chapman has given way to a local coffee shop.
Vacancies come and go, but Fullerton’s appetite for reinvention remains constant. There have long been rumors of a restaurant or brewery opening at the train station (which is one of the county stations with an existing eatery. And then there’s the proposed Fox Block, a small village of restaurants proposed around the Fox Fullerton.
PHOTO 1: Blanquel Popular Art, which makes custom furniture and also pottery and folk art, began in Guadalajara in the 1960s and expanded to Fullerton in 2000. PHOTO 2: When finished in 1923, the 65-foot Chapman Building was the tallest in Orange County. PHOTO 3: The Californian Hotel opened in 1923 at the northwest corner of present-day Harbor Boulevard and Chapman Avenue, in large part to accommodate rail travelers. Today, it is Villa Del Sol, a retail and office center with six restaurants and a baseball memorabilia among its tenants. Photos by Joel Beers, Culture OC
The Art of the City
Art and culture may not be as prominent as booze or boba in downtown Fullerton, but there are plenty of attractions.
Just steps from the station, the Fullerton Museum Center hosts exhibitions and concerts, while the Maverick Theater stages plays in an intimate converted warehouse. All the Arts for All the Kids turns children on to the arts, Blanquel Popular Art has a fascinating range of Mexican folk art, Half Off Books, Comic Book Hide Out, Pastimes Collectibles and Vang’s World cater to readers and collectors, War Battle Games to gamers. Farther along Chapman Avenue, the Muckenthaler Cultural Center offers art classes, galleries,and outdoor performances and south on Harbor there is the living history of El Pachuco Zoot Suits.
That’s not to mention the vintage clothing, like Stray Cat Vintage and Costumes (which has been around since the 1980s and is next door to the legendary Black Hole Records), tattoo parlors, barber shops and salons and two escape rooms.
Music has always had a home here, too. Even though downtown hasn’t had a venue exclusively devoted to live music since Steamer’s jazz café closed in 2015 (although the Continental Room night argue otherwise), live music still thrives in bars and cafés like The Night Owl, Back Alley Bar and Grill, Les Amis and the aforementioned Continental Room – where, on any given night, you might catch a local indie act or a surprise touring artist.
And, of course, there is a place to hurl an axe.
And if creating the next Great American Novel, play or AI program is your thing, you can rent a desk at Pro Desk Space for as low as $7 an hour or $40 a day.
A Hard Chapter
No story of the Fullerton Transportation Center is complete without acknowledging the 2011 killing of Kelly Thomas, a homeless man with schizophrenia, after a violent encounter with six Fullerton police officers.
The incident, which took place just a few steps from the station, drew national attention and sparked a wave of protests that changed the city’s politics and police culture. For years, a makeshift memorial of flowers and photos surrounded a nearby light post. Today, it’s gone – but the event remains an indelible part of Fullerton’s modern history.
Historical remembrance with a few glaring omissions
No Metrolink station in the county commemorates its rail history like Fullerton. Volunteers at the Fullerton Train Museum keep that legacy alive, restoring vintage railcars and telling stories of how steel tracks gave birth to a city. The Old Spaghetti Factory now occupies the ornate Southern Pacific depot, while the old Union Pacific station endures as part of Hopscotch Tavern, still trembling with the echo of passing trains.
In 2025, the station received an $800,000 state grant for upgrades and beautification. The elevator panels gleamed – for about two weeks – before being carved, dented and defaced by those who seem determined to leave their own rough mark. But above the scuffed metal, 16 sleek art panels now stretch across the pedestrian bridge, celebrating Fullerton’s icons: Leo Fender’s guitars, Fullerton adopted son Tommy Lasorda’s grin, the orange groves, the airfield, the sunlit optimism of a Southern California town that never stopped reinventing itself.
And yet – what’s missing from those panels, and from every Metrolink station in the county, is the full story, that of the largely Chinese workers who swung the hammers and drove the spikes that stitched the county together; and the Indigenous, Mexican and Mexican American laborers who picked, packed and hauled the fruit that made Orange County wealthy.
Fullerton remembers its inventors, its dreamers, its doers – the engines and the entrepreneurs – but not those whose sweat built the foundation that others would polish into prosperity.
The city that grew around the tracks still hums to their rhythm. Trains may no longer define Fullerton’s economy, but they remain its heartbeat – steady, enduring, unmistakably its own.
Still, there’s a hole in that heart. A silence in the story. A glaring omission that is long overdue for correction.
FULLERTON Metrolink Station
Address: 120 E. Santa Fe Ave., Fullerton
Opened: First Fullerton station opened in 1888. Metrolink opened March 28, 1994.
Parking: 1,321 spaces/40 handicapped spaces. Parking is free for all Metrolink passengers; 72 hours maximum limit in parking structure; three-hour limit in other marked lots.
Amenities: Bike racks, Amtrak ticket office, restaurants, public phones
Route: Southbound: Fifth stop, and second in Orange County, on the OC Line, which runs from Los Angeles Union Station to Oceanside; also part of Perris/91 line, which runs from Perris to Los Angeles.
Metrolink Schedule*
Weekdays: Five southbound trains, departing between 9:18 a.m. to 10:18 p.m. 20 northbound trains, departing between 5:43 a.m. and 8:43 p.m.
Weekends: Four southbound trains, departing between 9:16 a.m. to 5:04 p.m. Six northbound trains, departing between 8:38 a.m. and 6:54 p.m.
*subject to change
Amtrak Schedule*
Everyday: 12 southbound trains, departing between 6:41 a.m. and 10:41 p.m. 12 northbound trains, departing between 6:18 a.m. to 11:18 p.m.
*subject to change
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