The Brief

This year Pasadena hosts its annual Cheeseburger Week, Jan. 21- 27. It's been a regular event for more than a decade, but this year is particularly notable — the city says it's 100 years since the national icon was born.

The week is hosted in honor of Lionel Sternberger, who, according to local lore, created the beloved cheeseburger at his roadside stand off Route 66 in Pasadena in the 1920s.

But did Sternberger really create the cheeseburger? And what year? And why? While the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce believes it occurred in 1924, other sources give different dates. Other states also claim the honor. It’s one of SoCal’s numerous unsolved mysteries.

Burger history

The course of food history is often murky at best. According to The Great American Burger Book, by George Motz, it is believed burger meat (originally raw mutton) originated in the 13th century Mongol empire, before Russian and German immigrants brought their chopped beef version to America in the 19th century. It was in the go-go U.S.A. that a sizzling burger was probably slapped between two slices of bread, with multiple people claiming the honor sometime between 1885-1900.

But there is no ambivalence about the fact that 20th century Southern California is the birthplace of fast food. Due to our early adoption of cars, freeways, commutes, and our love of a cheap, greasy meal, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Fatburger, and In-N-Out, among others, were all started by savvy, entrepreneurial Southern Californians. And Lionel Sternberger was a true forerunner to these revolutionary restaurateurs.

Sternberger’s road stand

The earliest known version of Sternberger’s creation of the cheeseburger was recently discovered by food historian Andrew Smith, author of Hamburger: A Global History. It is in an article in The Pasadena Post, a now defunct newspaper. Published July 23, 1931, it sheds light on Sternberger’s early life and innovative ideas.

Lionel Sternberger was born in New York City in 1907. Soon the Sternberger family was off to booming SoCal, and Lionel attended grade school in Eagle Rock before attending high school in Pasadena. A natural born entrepreneur, he started a cider stand at the age of 12 and was running a grocery store at the age of 15.

Lionel Sternberger in the Pasadena Post.

(

Courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside

)

According to the Pasadena Post, in 1927, an act of kindness led Sternberger to his most famous acquisition — 1500 West Colorado Boulevard (part of the legendary Route 66), just west of the Colorado Street Bridge:

The young man started on the present enterprise in 1927, as the result of an interesting incident. On the approach to Pasadena, he halted his automobile and gave a lift to a waysider who wanted to get off at the soft drink stand at the crown of Colorado Street near Annandale Golf Links. Sternberger knew this location well — he and his father, years before, sold fruit on the same spot.

The road was already lined with quick serve options for harried commuters.

“There was a row of food stands offering everything from burgers and fries to Chinese food,” says Paul Little, president of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce and Civic Association in an interview over email. “They catered to drivers heading into Eagle Rock and other parts of L.A. and toward Glendale.”

Sternberger reached the little stand, which a 1937 issue of Western Restaurants claims was called Hinky Dink Barbecue Stand. The Post reported:

“On reaching the top of the hill, Sternberger drove his car to the doorstep so his passenger would not have to wade in the mud left by the rain the night before. Sternberger engaged the owner of the soft drink stand in conversation, with the result he swapped his car for the stand.”

He renamed the stand (little more than a cooking shack) the Boulevard Stop, before changing its name to The Rite Spot. But the going was rough, and Sternberger’s stand was only bringing in around $2 a day.

Adding the cheese

Stories diverge wildly over what prompted Sternberger to add a slice of cheese (kind unspecified) on the hamburger. According to The Pasadena Post, an unnamed friend suggested the struggling Sternberger try something new that would set his stand apart.

“Together the pair ‘invented’ a new hamburger sandwich,” the Post reported, “which included a slice of cheese, a food never before tried on such a sandwich. It was very tasty.”

Sternberger’s nephew Don heard another story from his father, Van, who would join Lionel in the family business.

“Lionel was a big eater,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2012. “One day he just decided he wanted a hamburger with cheese on it and started doing it. That’s how my dad described it to me. My dad was proud of it. I tried once to get him to go to In-N-Out with me and he wouldn’t.”

(There are also other versions, like Sternberger putting “everything” on a burger as requested by an enthusiastic customer, including cheese, and Sternberger burning one side of a patty, which he covered up with a cheese slice.)

According to The Pasadena Post, Sternberger was initially wary of promoting this new burger with cheese, due to cheese costs at the time. However, he tried it out one day on two faithful customers — and they loved it.

“The next day,” The Pasadena Post reported, “an automobile with six passengers halted at the door. The driver asked: ‘Is this where hamburgers with cheese are served?’”

The customers loved the newfangled cheeseburger so much they ordered seconds. Soon The Rite Stop cheeseburgers were all the rage in Pasadena, and Sternberger was banking $400 a day.

“As a Muir Tech student in Pasadena in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s,” Pasadena native Jim Horbuckle recalled, per Smith, “the big treat was to take our dates to Lionel Sternberger’s Rite Spot — delicious hamburgers with cheese — 15 cents, a glass of cider, 10 cents. The total bill was $1.”

The menu of the Rite Spot showing Aristocratic Hamburger, the original hamburger with cheese, on the top left hand side.

(

Courtesy of the Archives (EPH-RES 2.39)

/

Pasadena Museum of History

)

An undated menu for The Rite Spot shows just how important this new edition to the menu was. The first item on the menu, it was called the “Aristocratic Hamburger” and billed as “the original hamburger with cheese.” The rest of the menu was standard Americana fare — chili and beans, Steak Lover’s Delight, Baked Alaskan Shrimp, and Pie á la Mode.

One side of the menu from a Rite Spot restaurant.

(

Courtesy of the Archives (EPH-RES 2.39)

/

Pasadena Museum of History

)

By 1931, Sternberger was prospering. The Rite Spot expanded to another brick-and-mortar eatery in Pasadena, and also opened locations in Glendale and Highland Park. With his newfound fortune, Sternberger reportedly built a large house in the Pasadena neighborhood of Annadale, which he shared with his mother.

The Sternberger family continued in the restaurant business for decades. When Sternberger died in 1964, Time Magazine credited him as the inventor of the cheeseburger (although it stated he had created it while working at a stand owned by his father).

Rivals to the crown

However, there are other claimants to the cheeseburger throne. According to George Motz, a 1928 menu from Odell’s Restaurant in South Los Angeles features a chili cheeseburger. Kaelin’s Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, has long asserted that their founder Carl Kaelin created the cheeseburger in 1934. And Louis Ballast of Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver had the name “cheeseburger” trademarked in 1935.

“There has been some discussion back and forth in a friendly rivalry,” Little says of the competing claims. “Menus and other historical artifacts support the Rite Spot as being the originator of the hamburger with cheese. Sternberger did not call it a cheeseburger, which is what the others who claim to be originators use.”

Indeed, if the newly uncovered Pasadena Post article is accurate, it seems the main competition for “first cheeseburger” may only be the long-gone Odell’s. But Pasadena has embraced the legend of Lionel Sternberger and uses it today to celebrate the city’s thriving restaurant scene.

“In 2011, as part of California Restaurant Month, we started hosting Cheeseburger Week in January,” Little says. “We have done that every year since. It was a take-out version during the pandemic.”

A plaque commemorating cheeseburger's invention in Pasadena in the sidewalk outside the LA Financial Credit Union at 1520 W. Colorado Boulevard.

(

Courtesy Pasadena Chamber of Commerce

)

In 2017, a marker was placed at the site of the first The Rite Spot, into the sidewalk outside of the LA Financial Credit Union at 1520 W. Colorado Blvd. It tells yet another version of the story.

“On this site in 1924,” it reads, “sixteen-year-old Lionel Sternberger first put cheese on a hamburger and sold it to a customer, thereby inventing the cheeseburger. The “Aristocratic Burger” at the Rite Spot is the first instance of a hamburger with cheese being served to a customer.”

Whatever the case, we can all agree the end result was delicious — and well worth celebrating during Cheeseburger Week.

A federal judge on Tuesday held the Department of Homeland Security in contempt for allegedly slow-rolling an order to create digital copies of communications from personal and government cell phones used by immigration agents during operations in the Los Angeles area last year.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in the Central District of California previously ordered the federal government in January to expedite imaging the personal cell phones of more than 800 agents involved in controversial immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025.

Judge Frimpong imposed a fine of $500 per day on the federal government until it complies with the order to turn over phones as part of discovery and reimburse plaintiffs’ attorneys for the legal costs of getting the records.

Attorneys for DHS admitted in court in June that the agency had not provided the records. They told the judge they were processing the government devices at a rate of three phones every two weeks, which plaintiffs noted would take nearly four years to complete.

Attorneys representing immigrants caught up in Operation At Large — the name given to the Trump administration’s Los Angeles immigration crackdown last year — argue the phones may contain evidence of a pattern of racial profiling by federal agents.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in May that the Department of Homeland Security “simply proceeded to thwart” Frompong’s order “by dragging their feet on imaging government-issued cell phones and by openly defying the order as to personal phones.”

Last month, ACLU attorneys asked Frimpong to issue another order that would prohibit agents from detaining people based on their race. They cited text messages and body camera footage in which agents used racial slurs, including “wet and “tonks,” to identify working-class Latinos to stop, according to court records.

“Not only are federal agents violating the Constitution on the streets, the government is violating court orders by intentionally withholding critical evidence about its immigration enforcement operations.” said Mayra Joachin with the ACLU of Southern California.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced seven motions Tuesday, all geared toward providing immediate and long-term relief for community members who’ve been hurt by the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights.

According to Jurado, the legislative package is centered around three priorities:

• “Immediate relief and cleanup”
• "Accountability, transparency and site safeguards”
• “Long-term oversight and community power”

Jurado is calling for a Mitigation Response Fund of up to $10 million to provide aid for affected residents and small businesses that have lost revenue as the neighborhood continues dealing with foul odors, flies, rats and other vermin. Jurado also wants to see higher penalties for corporate negligence, and create a commission to advise L.A.’s city leadership on environmental justice policy.

After the fire in mid-June, tons of food at the cold storage warehouse were left to rot. Now, more than a month later, community members are still dealing with odors and pests, which have disrupted local businesses, community spaces and everyday quality of life.

Local activists and community members say the Lineage fire aftermath is part of a long legacy of environmental injustice in Boyle Heights. In recent decades, residents have also dealt with pungent smells from rendering plants in the neighboring city of Vernon. And up until 2015, Vernon was also home to Exide, a battery recycling facility that contaminated the soil of thousands of homes in surrounding communities with lead. The taxpayer-funded cleanup for that issue is still ongoing. Lineage also has several facilities in the city of Vernon.

Jurado’s proposed commission “can serve as an interdisciplinary body to identify and start to protect our communities from historical harms that continue to function as standard practice today,” said mark! Lopez, a community organizer at East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

Community members will have a chance to provide public comment on Jurado’s motions before they move to a full council vote.

In a statement, Jurado said recovery "cannot mean removing debris and moving on.” In her view, it must also involve the “aggressive pursuit of every recoverable dollar from responsible parties” and "give communities that have carried Los Angeles' environmental burdens real power over what happens next."

Lineage President and CEO Greg Lehmkuhl previously said in a statement that he cannot estimate how long the cleanup will take. “What we can tell you is this: there are people on site working on this recovery 24/7,” he added.

L.A. County will provide assistance grants to small businesses that suffered financial loss from the Lineage warehouse fire that burned for a week in June in Boyle Heights. The fire's aftermath has many in the community seeking help to recover.

Why it matters

The county surveyed business owners in the area who said they are continuing to face a loss of customers and revenue amid persisting odor from food in the Boyle Heights warehouse that continues to rot in the summer heat. The fire started June 17 and burned until June 24. It initially generated significant air quality hazards and prompted evacuations.

About the funds

The grants from Supervisor Hilda Solis’ discretionary budget will be disbursed within 45 days — and then draw from countywide funds if needed. The county will also seek reimbursement for the grants from Lineage. The Department of Public Health and County Counsel will also evaluate new fees and penalties for businesses that pose environmental or health risks in L.A. County. Some fee increases could fund county assistance for future economic disasters.

Who is eligible

Small businesses within the affected area will be able to apply for the grants. The county is looking to prioritize initial funding for businesses that have not already received emergency financial support from other organizations.

More details to come

The Board of Supervisors and Department of Economic Opportunity will announce more about the amount of assistance and how to apply when those details are made final. Affected business owners and residents can find more information on the L.A. County Recovers website.

What to have ready

Existing documentation from L.A. County recommends you collect the following documentation of any damage.

(

Courtesy L.A. Department of Economic Opportunity

)

(

Courtesy L.A. Department of Economic Opportunity

)

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 on Tuesday to put a measure on the November ballot that will ask voters whether homes affected by the Palisades Fire should be exempt from the city’s controversial “mansion tax.”

If passed, the exemption would apply to the sale of homes damaged or destroyed by the fire. The exemption would last until early 2030, five years from the date of the fire.

This could potentially reduce the tax’s revenue up to 6% — or $32 million each year — according to a May 2026 report from the L.A. Housing Department.

How the ‘mansion tax’ works 

The “mansion tax,” officially called Measure ULA, is a tiered tax on real estate selling for $5.4 million or more. The tax, which was passed by voters in 2022, funds programs such as rental assistance, eviction defense and affordable housing construction in the city.

The measure has fierce defenders, as well as staunch critics. A statewide ballot measure sought to kill the tax before it was pulled by supporters earlier this year in exchange for a legislative deal in Sacramento.

State and local lawmakers have considered reducing the tax or exempting newly constructed apartment buildings. Their ideas have been guided by economic studies that found the tax was slowing down housing development in the city. So far, none of those reforms have mustered enough support to pass.

Where council members stand

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes Highland Park, Chinatown and Westlake, previously spoke against the measure’s scope at a City Council meeting on July 1.

“Any exemption should only be for homeowners whose primary residence was destroyed, and people who genuinely need help rebuilding, not LLCs, investors or people with a portfolio of properties,” Hernandez said. “We had the opportunity to write those protections into this ordinance, and we didn’t.”

Hernandez criticized her colleagues for shooting down the post-fire eviction protections she proposed after tenants living in her district lost work as gardeners and nannies in the Pacific Palisades.

“When wealthy property owners need relief, we’re willing to bend over backwards,” she said. “But when working class people and tenants need protection, suddenly our hands are tied and the political will is not there.”

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, voiced support for the measure at the same meeting.

“Putting this tax on these folks who are trying to recover and reckoning with the fact that some of them just aren’t coming home, is just unspeakably cruel,” Park said. “It’s an exemption that applies in very narrow circumstances to original owners and first transactions for five years, only for residential properties. This is the least we can do as this community continues to recover.”

In Tuesday’s meeting, Hernandez cast the lone vote against placing the measure on the November ballot. Thirteen council members supported the move. Councilmember Curren Price was not present for the vote.

What happens next 

L.A. voters will have the final say on whether Palisades homeowners will be exempt from the tax. The proposal needs a simple majority of support from voters in the upcoming November general election to pass.

How to keep tabs on the L.A. City Council

The L.A. City Council tends to meet Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Meetings typically start at 10 a.m.

Here’s how you can follow along:

• Attend in person: The council typically meets at City Hall, Council Chambers, 200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles
• Watch the live broadcast
• Here’s how to submit a comment or contact the council