A few months ago (actually many months ago, as you’ll read later) , I came across Madera County EDC’s Pinterest and while browsing through their saved pins I found some really cool stuff. I felt like I had discovered a little secret stash of Madera’s history. I was fascinated to see so many old photographs of Madera that were taken before my time. Some of the locations in the photographs I recognized while others were foreign to me. I found out quite a lot of things about Madera in such a short period of time, things I didn’t even expect to have existed back then!
One of the photos in the collection was that of a familiar building. It was the building where Maria Taco Shop operates from today! Though there was something off, it wasn’t Maria’s Taco Shop, it was a Taco Bell, so that was interesting discovery. Apparently the photo was taken sometime in the 1980’s.
I always thought that building was interesting. It has somewhat of a mission-style front, but after all it makes sense since Taco Bell logo has a bell in it, and where do we see bells in? Missions! After further looking into it, it turns out the building design was commonly used for Taco Bell locations throughout the U.S., just Google “old Taco Bell architecture” and you’ll see for yourself.
On a side note, I’ve only been to Maria’s Taco Shop once, this was several years ago. I think I ordered some chicken flautas or something like that. Is it good? If so, please leave some recommendations in the comments and I’ll try it out sometime.
Here is a photo I took on August 26, 2018 (right) and an old photo of the time it was a Taco Bell (left).
Some obvious changes are the signage, but they also retrofitted some windows in the arches. Besides that, everything else looks the same to me. If you’re wondering the location, it’s on the northeast corner of 4th Street and Gateway Drive.
As you may have noticed, it took me about 10 months after taking the photo to actually post about it. I believe 10 months later the building should still looks the same, however, Maria’s Taco Shop did change ownership since then. Hopefully, my next post doesn’t take me as long. 🙂
This one of several posts I plan on doing on comparing photos from the old days to present day, so stay tuned for more!
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