Forgotten Destinations: Amboy : A Ghost Town that is not Dead Yet

Article and pictures by Natasha Petrosova

In a middle of October , the Mojave Desert is cool by desert standards. The wind is blowing strong, the air is dry and the dust and rocks get into everything. A few brave live here. However, eighty years ago , this desert was alive with trains, people, stores, cars, and cafes . Many of those buildings still stand here but only a few are occupied. By the mid -20th century there was no longer enough to live here for. Not enough trains or cars passing through, not enough commerce to sustain a community. Neither there are enough dedicated citizens to reinvent the towns. Most of the buildings are left as they were with an impression that former occupants had every intention of coming back. The mostly wooden structures still stand, baking in a heat, swaying by the wind and collecting dust.

Those who travel and explore Mojave Desert will notice that this desert is filled with those ghost towns such as Bagdad, Ludlow, Rundsbutg , Garlock , all teetering on the edge of existence. They inspired questions about our responsibility to abandoned buildings and towns. Do we just let them rot away? Do we continue to hope that people will come back? is preserving the past is a noble cause or fool's errand?

Amboy is one of those towns that is left to fade away in the blistering sun , has changed numerous ownerships with no one being able or willing to put on the work to revive it. In 2003, Amboy was listed on Ebay for 1.9 million. Ther were no takers and the property entered foreclosure. In 2005 , at the much lesser price , it finally found its new owner, Southern California chicken magnate, Albert Okura, who is committed to reviving the town. Nearly 10 years later Alber Okura stands faithful to his commitment. However, the future of Amboy is still up in the air.

Amboy originated in 1883 but was actually settled in 1858 when prospectors came to claim the hill's iron ore. According to 1877 map drawn by Lieutenant J.C. Mallery of the U.S. Army Corps of engineers, a road established in these years connected Amboy to the Dale mining district.

It is not exactly clear why the settlement was named "Amboy." As the railroad established water stops in California, the communities were named in alphabetical order from west to east, stopping at the Arizona state line. Amboy was the first .

In 1865, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company was founded . Thier goal was to establish rail service from San Francisco to San Diego. They did just that for a while . However in 1862 Pacific Railway Acts promoted a construction of a transcontinental railway through land grants and government bonds. The southern Pacific Railroad took a full advantage of these government handouts and by 1884 through land grants, bonds, company consolidation, and leasing of other railroads, the "mighty" Southern Pacific reached New Orleans (a route nicknamed "the Sunset Route").

Southern Pacific promised to build at least twenty miles of rail per year beginning in 1870. Construction fell behind, but on June 22nd, 1883, the Southern Pacific Railroad finished its 223 miles of rail connecting the Mojave Desert to Needles, California, allowing the giant steel beasts known as locomotives to pass through the desert.

Amboy used to be a water and repair stop for trains. Amboy did not have a bank or a fire department . A school house was built in 1903. Other communities in Mojave desert like Ludlow were different from Amboy. They became the party towns for the thirsty, recreation-starved miners who had to deal with alcohol-free mining camps. With pool halls, saloons and brothels , communities like that lived off of the worker's vice. Amboy , however, got its boost from a discovery of natural resources, that were found not in the mountains but at the bottom of Bristol Lake.

The resource was salt and calcium chloride. While drilling a water well in 1910 , the railroad company and discovered that the water contained 10 times as much salt as the ocean. The Pacific Cement Plaster Company had already built the mill in Amboy in 1904, mining in Bristol Lake for both salt and gypsum was at its heights. But like all booms, this one was also short lived. Ther were other salt deposits discovered in easier -to-reach places that forced all mills to close by 1924. Amboy began to fade in history just like other towns in Mojave desert.

Then another problem followed . On October 29th, 1929, "Black Tuesday", the stock market lost nearly thirteen percent of its value. The subsequent Great Depression decimated the railroads. The Tonopah and Tidewater and the Ludlow and Southern line, other famed desert railroads, were ripped up by 1935. The mighty Southern Pacific, bigger and more financially solvent than its competitors, continued to operate and was still turning a profit until the late 1940s, but the end was nearing for even the strongest of the locomotives.

But the invention that came next was, the automobile, that revolutionized the way Americans traveled and that gave another chance of life to Amboy.

In 1927 , Cyrus Avery and the newly formed US Highway 66 Association convinced Congress to build an interstate highway from Chicago to Los Angeles. Construction of US 66 begun the same year and 2,448 miles road was fully paved by 1938. Route 66 was built to follow a railroad through the southwest. The road was built almost parallel to both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. Amboy was included on the route.

During the mid-1930s, with Depression at its height thousands of people traveled the newly -built Route 66 in search of the better life elsewhere. Amboy flourished , hitting its peak right when Depression was at its worst. The population jumped up to 200 people. They had three gas stations, two cafes, three motor courts, four garages, a post office a church , a school that were built with the colorful signs offering air conditioning to the visitors.

Amboy was an oasis in the middle of the desert. Roy Crowl a railroad operator noticed the rise of traffic and decided that it was time to go where the people were. He moved to Amboy and built Roy's Garage. The desert roads were rough on cars and thus made Roy's the busiest place in town. Soon , Roy realized that customers were getting hungry while waiting , so he built a cafe. Soon after Roy also built a motel. The auto parts were not always available , so customers had to wait.

Roy's Motel & Cafe had since become a Route 66 legend. Opened in 1938 by Roy and his wife, Betty, along with their son-in -law Buster Burris, the motel has five cabins with a cafe next door. Roy did so well that he was able to buy Betty a trained pilot, a runway left over from the 1910s. Propeller planes , still land on this runway. Roy and Betty retired in 1959, leaving Roy's in Buster's name. Buster went to Los Angeles for design ideas and renovated Roy's in the style he observed there. The Roy's sign still stands over the Amboy town . It is a retro-future look and a window to the past.

In Jun 29th, 1956 , Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Federal-aid Highway Act. He called it " the greatest public works project in the history of the world". A cross-country trip that would have taken twenty days in 1950 would now only take four.

For Amboy it meant another death sentence. Route 66 with its twisty, turning road and lower speed limit would become obsolete. And so would the small towns that populated that road, By 1964 , the concrete had been poured for the new supper highway, Interstate 40 and the cars were bypassing Amboy and the other Mojave towns and Amboy started once again fading into history.

Today Amboy feels more forgotten than dead. Ther are still signs of life. You may hear a dog bark from the distance, some houses are occupied, RVs and trailers stand along the side of the road providing traveling homes for a few. An estimated population of Amboy who live there a year round is about 4 people. On a nice October day , travelers may pass and stop to take pictures. Roy's Cafe& motel sign is the most photographed sign in the world.

Amboy is still very much in the mind of Albert Okura who bought this town from Buster Burris's ninety-year-old widow for $425.000.
Okura grew up in Wilmington , a few miles from Long Beach on a coast of Southern California. His first job was Burger King in 1970. Fourteen years later Okura opened his own fast food restaurant with an uncle in San Bernardino County a Mexican rotisserie chicken place called Juan Pollo. Today, there are 27 locations throughout Southern California. Okura purchased the site of the very first McDonald's in San Bernardino County in 1998, which was run by the McDonald brothers in the 1940s before Ray Kroc bought out their company.   He turned the site into the corporate offices of Juan Pollo on one side and a McDonald's museum on the other. On the surface, the McDonald's site purchase makes more sense than Okura's decision to buy Amboy. But Okura has a tendency toward collecting altered and once Amboy was for sale , he believed that it was his destiny to own the town. Once Okura purchased Amboy , he immediately went to work cleaning , repairing and preserving the town. In ten years that he owned it , he did not knock down any buildings , he simply tried to keep a town afloat. Okura reopened Roy's but not like a restaurant but like gift shop and hired a few locals to work the shifts. Okura hopes that one day he will be able to turn it into an authentic Route 66 dinner. Okura admits that he never had any delusions to make money off of Amboy itself. For Okura the value was promotional "If I keep it pure, functional, historically accurate, then me and my company get recognition" . Despite Okura's best intentions, Amboy sits in a state of suspended life. The old cabins that still stand off to the side of the former café have a decently fresh coat of paint but are a mess inside. Okura losses money every year on this investment. It costs him about $5,000 a month on staffing, keeping gas flowing and general maintenance.

Amboy represents a difficulty preserving the past. Some may feel that towns like Amboy should adapt or die in a kind of Ghost Towns Darwinism . But Okura is hopeful to renovate the city, bring more tourists in and keep the town alive.

references:

http://alchetron.com/Albert-Okura-299745-W

A look at Juan Pollo founder Albert Okura's success, big dreams . http://www.sbsun.com/lifestyle/20140817/a-look-at-juan-pollo-founder-albert-okuras-success-big-dreams