Several miles on, I stopped to photograph an abandoned home on the side of the road.
A few minutes later I came to another abandoned home near the corner of an unpaved side road. The neighboring lot appeared abandoned too.
It didn't take me long to realize that there were so many vacant homes along Amboy Road, if I stopped at each one I’d never get to Amboy before dark. So I made quick stops at the most interesting ones and snapped pictures of some of the others from the car.
I had to get a photo of this strange sign that stood in front of what appeared to be an abandoned ranch.
 |
| This house was on its last legs. |
I pulled over at a soduim facility, National Chloride Co. which wasn't abandoned, but looked too interesting to pass by. The land was scarred by evaporation ponds of clear aqua beside snake-like mounds of earth.
The salt was so ubiquitous it could have been mistaken for frost and chunks of ice, had it not been a scorching hot day.
The iconic sign for Roy's Cafe welcomed me as I finally pulled into Amboy.
Adrenaline shot through my veins. I'd been meaning to explore the unique little ghost town ever since I first read about it a year earlier.
Originally settled in 1858, Amboy did not officially became a town until 1883, when a railroad station was built there. The opening of Route 66 in 1926 brought quite a bit of tourism and traffic to Amboy, which became an important stopping point for travelers across the Mojave. In 1938, Roy Crowl, the owner of the town, opened Roy's Motel and Café, which thrived as the only gas station and lodging in the area.
The opening of Interstate 40 in 1973 diverted the majority of traffic away from Amboy, resulting in the town's decline. Amboy was bought by investors and changed hands several times over the years before Albert Okura purchased it in 2005 with the intention of preserving the town and opening a museum.
I was ecstatic to find that Roy’s Cafe had indeed reopened. I pictured myself sitting at the lunch counter, sipping a vanilla malt and enjoying a burger and fries, like so many a traveler had during the heyday of Route 66. Unfortunately in its new incarnation, Roy's Cafe no longer had a functioning kitchen and served only as a gift shop.
The dozen or so little white buildings that comprise Amboy are situated around a short segment of the highway. Nearly all of them stand vacant.
There is even a tiny airstrip that Harrison Ford supposedly used to fly into before grabbing lunch at Roy’s.
The old motel rooms were the only buildings fenced off with keep out signs. Several old cars were parked in the fenced off area, and a maintenance man was working nearby. There were so many other great places to explore in the town that I didn't feel like I was missing much by not getting inside the motel.
The cottages, however, were open and still contained props from the 2010 movie "Beneath The Dark", which had been filmed there.
Behind Roy's is a little neighborhood of 4 houses, which have been thoroughly vandalized and torn apart by scavengers in search of copper.
A work shed contained old tools and decaying junk.
Across the highway stood a little church and rectory mostly untouched by vandals.
Daylight was waning, so I had to hurry to explore everything before sunset. I explored the school last because it was so dark inside, the precious daylight wouldn’t have made a difference. My flashlight and headlamp worked very well, but the pictures still turned out quite grainy and unevenly lit.
Feeling incredibly fulfilled at having explored the amazing ghost town, I got back on the highway and continued on through the darkness toward the dying town of Needles.
Thanks for checking out this article. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to share it on Facebook. While you're at it, please subscribe to Places That Were and follow me on my social media sites:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/placesthatwere
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JimSullivanPlacesThatWere/posts
EyeEm: https://www.eyeem.com/u/placesthatwere
Instagram: http://instagram.com/theplacesthatwere
Twitter: https://twitter.com/placesthatwere/
Tumblr: http://placesthatwere.tumblr.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jimplicit
500px: https://500px.com/placesthatwere
Thank you!
Get ahold of the book "The Silence and the Sun" by Joe De Kehoe if you can. He thoroughly explored and researched Amboy, Cadiz and lots of other towns around old route 66 in tje California desert, interviewed families, searched archives, and took lots of pictures. It's a real treasure.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the suggestion! Looks like a great read. I'm interested to read the interviews. I love personal accounts from people who lived in these places. They offer such interesting perspectives.
DeleteLoved your video, blog and photos! We just visited Amboy today. We were driving from Vegas to Palm Springs, and I had read about Amboy and seen pictures online so I wanted to stop and check it out. Definitely had a creepy vibe, but there were several other tourist types there also checking it out. Bought some gas at Roy's and checked out the hotel. It seemed the cottages had been used for some sort of art exhibit.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Devin! I'm surprised were able to buy gas at Roy's. When I was there, it was functioning only as a gift shop with no working gas pumps.
DeleteHi Jim. Cool video. Enjoyed watching it. I am planning to drive from 29 Palms to the Amboy Crater (on National Trails Hwy) this weekend using Amboy Road. Was wondering if Amboy Road is completely paved the entire way or if there are any sections of dirt road along the way. My car isn't great on dirt roads and with it being roughly 50 miles want to make sure I won't have any issues going that route. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks, John
ReplyDeleteThank you. I believe Amboy Road is completely paved the whole way. Several dirt roads intersect it, but you won't need to travel on any unpaved roads to get from 29 Palms to Amboy. I'm not sure where the crater is though. I don't know if the road leading to it is paved.
DeleteWe used to live in White Hills, Az. and i enjoyed seeing your map and seeing names of little towns we use to go to for shopping and site seeing. Amboy was always a pit stop on our way to San Diego.
ReplyDeleteHave liked all the places that were from the rust belt as i was raised in Ohio.
It sounds like we've been to a lot of the same places. So glad you're enjoying my posts. Thank you for the nice comment :)
DeleteHey, we completed a comic book loosely based on Amboy. I definitely took liberties with simplifying the town. I am posting all 200 pages on my website for those who are interested, t no cost, because we love the town. Here is the link https://tapas.io/episode/734229
ReplyDeleteAte at Roy’s around 1980. Took our kids to explore the Amboy crater nearby. Fun area to explore.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to visit Amboy. I'm obsessed with desert towns & creepy places! Did you know, a very scary movie called The Hitcher, was filmed there in 1986? It's a short but very intense thriller worth watching. It's sad to see Roy's cafe on the decline, in the movie it was still a functioning cafe and had running water. I definitely plan on visiting Amboy sometime!
ReplyDeleteDriving from Colorado on rt. 66 in its heyday my mother & I had to stop at Amboy (mid 1950s) to get gas. My mom was incensed at the high price of gas that was charged in Amboy: 40 cents a gallon! During those trips (without air conditioning) the wind was like a furnace; I used to "hate" that stretch of land! Another problem was the length of time it took to get through that are: a 2-lane road, slow trucks, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass so we could "go around" the trucks.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great blog, thank you for sharing it. I grew up in 29 Palms and have visited Amboy several times. I'm old enough to remember when hundreds of people lived there (most worked at the salt mine) and the school was still in use. But those days are long gone. You should visit Amboy again someday and go to the nearby Crater. IMHO, it's the most interesting site in the area. Bring water, they recently found the body of a woman who somehow got lost and died . The trail is clearly marked, so my guess is she didn't bring water and died from heatstroke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amboy_Crater
ReplyDeleteSome Solor place ?
ReplyDeleteI just took a drive down and stopped at Roy's..such a cool spot.Your write up,and pictures make me want to go back and look around the entire town a bit more.
ReplyDeleteI used to work out there for Hill Brothers Chemical Company made calcium chloride powder and anhydrous flakes I have a good friend of mine that works at National chloride right down the road I worked out there for three years and he's been out there forever and I had a really good friend of mine that passed away he was born in Amboy and he died in Amboy he was down there at the calcium chloride ponds and had a heart attack and passed away so his name was Benny Maldonado anyway I've got some friends that work at Leslie salt and National chloride of Amboy California so I'm very familiar I used to live in Twentynine Palms California and drive to and from Amboy everyday back in the round 1989-1990 I have good friends that live in Twentynine Palms California like I said they works at National chloride and has for like 15 to 18 years I believe thanks for your video it's definitely something to see especially when the birds mistaken the calcium chloride for water and then when they drink it they die anyway I used to eat a cheeseburger and fries at Roy's Cafe whenever I drink alcohol I used to buy a 12-pack of beer there cost me $6 but that was back in the early 90s anyway thank you have a good day God bless
ReplyDeleteI first came upon Roy's when I drove cross-country from back East in 1971, on my way to Twentynine Palms. I stopped for a quick bite and gas-up prior to heading on to the "Stumps". Two years later, I passed it on the way out. headed back East but didn't stop since I didn't need to gas-up or anything. I-40 definitely had cut it it out of the loop and that's sad! I wish I had stopped then to get a last "shot" of the place!
ReplyDeleteWe always passed Roy's, but never bothered to stop. The trouble is that Amboy is not much of an oasis; there are plenty of places easier to get to in the area. It's not that far to Barstow, Yermo of even Newberry Springs. Too expensive to stop really. I'd stop now, just because, but that's not going to make a business profitable. Bottom line is that there has to be a need, and no one really likes to live in a hot, miserable place just because. People would rather hop in a car and drive to Barstow than live in Amboy, Essex or the myriad of Depression era towns that dot the Mojave.
ReplyDeleteWe through Amboy many times on our way to Las Vegas and always wondered what the inside of these buildings looked like. I didn't know if we needed permission to explore them. We lived in 29 Palms for 9 years. Thanks for sharing these photos!
ReplyDeleteMy in-laws, after they retired, used to spend their winters in Lake Tamarisk, close to Desert Center, California, which you wrote about earlier (there's much I could say about DC, but I'll leave that for another time). My wife and spent every Christmas and New Year's with them from 1985 to 1993 and I took every opportunity to explore the backroads of the Colorado desert and the eastern Mojave, often racking up 500 miles in a single day. I used to enjoy stopping by Amboy to chat with Buster Burris , the crusty old character who owned more or less the whole of Amboy for decades, with Roy's being the heart of his little "empire". Buster could remember back to when the Okies were migrating west along the old 66-- on which Amboy was situated-- and he was full of great stories. He also owned one of the two towing companies in Amboy and he could tell bloodcurdling tales of speeding out to bloody crash sites at 80 MPH to beat his competitor and secure the cleanup contract with CHP. As Buster used to say about those races: "I never lost". Buster, wanting to retire, put the Amboy townsite (several hundred acres in size) up for sale in the late 80s for three million bucks, and after a few years it was finally bought by a couple of young sharpies from LA who had great plans for the site that never reached fruition. The old times-- and the old-timers-- are gone.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever have a chance to see a creepy Brad Pitt movie called "Kalifornia", there's a crucial scene in it that was shot in Roy's Cafe. And if you can find it, there was a fine book published in 1988 by the University of Oklahoma Press called "Route 66" with text by Susan Croce Kelly and extensive and beautiful b&w photography bt Quinta Scott. It contains a bunch of material on Amboy-- and Buster (with a great photo of him).
I was hoping you had some of the story about why all the small houses are abandoned on Amboy road leaving Twentynine palms. I’ll have to keep googling!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this i wonder if the church is the one in the story 😳
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2vgw50/welcome_to_amboy_ca/
I love amboy a for the right price I'd buy the town today to get away from the crazy world of today
ReplyDelete