The exterior of AMA Donuts in Pomona, Calif., on July 22, 2026.

AMA Donuts in Pomona, a medium-sized city about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, looks like many a roadside doughnut stand. There’s hot coffee and affordable doughnuts — chocolate glazed, maple bars and French crullers, of course — and inside the 24-hour shop, a handful of yellow linoleum booths allow customers to sit and enjoy said confections.

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll notice that the shop’s sign is a familiar arching shape, and its red-and-white tiling, sloped roof and space-aged sign hearken back to a golden era for a certain fast food giant.

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That’s because AMA Donuts is quietly housed in one of the oldest and most significant McDonald’s locations anywhere in America. The restaurant retains many of the same design features from the earliest days of the San Bernardino-founded fast food chain, before even Ray Kroc bought into the family brand and began to take it global. Today, AMA Donuts sits inside the second-oldest remaining McDonald’s anywhere in the world (second only to the famous one in Downey), yet few know that it exists.

Now, thanks to the city........

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