The Rebirth of the Ghost Town of Amboy

Welcome to Amboy, CA

According to Ken Large, Operations and Logistics Manager for Roy’s Motel and Cafe in Amboy, there are ongoing plans to rejuvenate this once prospering town into something for the future.

“When Albert passed away in 2023,” Ken said, “I wondered what would become of his dream of turning this once vibrant town into a go-to destination for those traveling along Route 66.”

Albert Okura, the founder of the popular restaurant chain Juan Pollo in Southern California, had purchased the nearly forgotten town of Amboy in 2005. Albert loved history, especially the history of Southern California and more importantly Route 66. When he purchased the town of Amboy, his wish was to do all he could to turn it back into the iconic spot where travelers from across the United States would stop along America’s Highway during its heyday.

The original sign is lit up nightly in Amboy, CA

He had big plans, but that was nothing unusual for this man who created a chain of cookeries which would later label him the Chicken Man for the delicious food served in his nearly 30 various locations.

Albert knew he could recreate the thrill of travelers along Route 66 that was once felt after the route was completed in 1926. Sadly, Albert passed away on January 27, 2023 at the young age of 72 in Ontario, California. 

But, his dream did not die. “His family have been wonderful in keeping Albert’s dreams alive here in Amboy,” Ken said. “Take a walk around and see for yourself all the construction being conducted to complete this place by the summer of 2026.”

That summer would be the 100th anniversary of the completion of Route 66, and there are huge plans being developed along that long river of asphalt stretching from Chicago all the way to Santa Monica.”

Rumor has it that a family of Sasquatches may attend the festivities somewhere along the nearly 2,500 mile highway - but of course, that is on a need-to-know-basis.

And, I need to know!

Before I started walking the property, Ken did inform me that finishing the entire project may be a bit of a stretch but “...knowing Albert’s family as I do, I think we may indeed have everything up and running for the huge crowds that will be coming through. They are an awesome group of folks and I am sure keeping Albert’s legacy alive will be in the forefront of their thoughts.”

I’ve been through Amboy more times than I can count - either heading east or heading west. Did I stop each time? No, but every time I passed by those stark white empty cabins, the large paned windowed reception area of the motel, and the gas station with its huge sign out front welcoming visitors, I felt a slight tug at my heart.

Road monument with unfished cabins in the rear at Amboy, CA

Amboy, once a bustling and hustling railroad stop for miners, travelers, shippers, receivers, and those that just wanted an adventure which then, as many such towns did, turned into a ghost town and was now being brought back to life, makes me smile.

The last time I visited and spoke with Ken, a large tour bus had just pulled up and about a million tourists exited. It was a very large custom made bus.

“We sometimes get up to three thousand people visiting a day,” he said. I just saw a million, so I suppose his math could be accurate, rounded off for the year.

As I was taking a snap of some of the construction going on, a tourist walked to me and in a very German accent and said he recognized me.

“Yes, I am John R. Beyer, the world-renowned travel writer,” I humbly responded.

“Nein,” he retorted. “You look like the restroom attendant. Paper is needed in stall three.”

I nodded and then mumbled, “You probably meant number two.”

Ken advised me that 50% of the visitors are European, 35% from the United States, 10% from South and Central America and the remainder from Asia or perhaps the territory of Nauru.

As I wandered here and there, teams of construction personnel were wiring this, harnessing that, and pretty much doing what construction personnel did. They were busy rebuilding Amboy into what Albert Okura had imagined.

New construction in the works in Amboy, CA

A town full of life which invited the tourist to stop for a spell for a rest, and perhaps a meal and then back onto the historic byway or Route 66.

In fact, in keeping to Albert’s plans, Ken explained that they hoped to have rooms ready to rent, a fully functioning restaurant, and other amenities which made staying in Amboy for more than a couple of hours a reality.

I asked about the family and their thoughts about Albert’s visions.

“I must say that Kyle, one of Albert’s children, comes here quite often and spends long weekends checking out how much work is getting done. Often, Mrs. Okura and other family members accompany him and they love it out here. They are a great and loving family.”

Years ago, my lovely wife Laureen, along with one of our daughters, Kelly, drove through Amboy and were delighted to see the site was being used as a Fly- In. Planes of all makes and models were actually landing along Route 66 and taxing to the small airport located there.

Music, food, and other entertainment were in abundance for all to share in.

Other events which are being coordinated by Ken, the other staff members, and the family are motorcycle rendezvous, classic car shows, airplane fly-ins, music festivals, space alien conventions, and the list goes on and on.

And gas is available at the original pumps

“We also are also a venue for those who want to rent the place out for movie shoots, television ads, music videos, weddings, and the like,” Ken stated.

Recently a Polish singer by the name of Daria Zawailaow utilized the town for a music video. It is spunky, riveting, and I have no idea what she is singing about - my Polish is rather limited except for some old and now inappropriate jokes.

The below link will show just one of the musical talents who visited Amboy and wanted to share with their audiences what an iconic place this little town is and why it is important to visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=CoMFkWwevjA

For more information: https://visitamboy.com/ 

John can be contacted at; beyersbyways@gmail.com

 

Amboy, Part I

Anyone who has traveled extensively along that long black ribbon of highway called Route 66 will recognize the name of the town of Amboy. Tourists, locals, and America’s Mother Road aficionados know of this old railway stop smack dab center in the Mojave Desert.

It is that iconic place just a few hundred yards from a double set of railroad tracks to the southwest which conjures up images of past times. Towns like Amboy were vital stops for visitors who ventured from the windy city of Chicago to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

The Mojave Desert is not for the weak-willed or unprepared. No, in the summer months the temperatures can easily soar into the triple digits making driving along Route 66 a challenge at times - especially before the invention of air conditioning for vehicles.

But it is these exact spots that remind the traveler of the fortitude and tenacity of those who went out and settled in sometimes very hostile territories - and succeeded.

Railroading was big business, moving goods from here to there to be consumed by those needing supplies or simply desiring goods from various locales around the country.

And the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad honchos knew the fastest route from large hubs, such as Barstow, would be straight across the Mojave Desert.

In the late 1880s, train engines needed water to build up steam to pump those large steel wheels along hundreds of miles of track.

So railroad stops were created and boom towns blossomed.

Towns like Siberia, Bagdad, Ibis, Bannock, and so many more once were thriving, but have now been nearly all forgotten through the decades. A sign here or there may advise the traveler of a tree as the only living entity in Bagdad. There are broken slabs of cement littering this section or that section of desert allowing those with an imagination to understand that folks once laughed and loved in these towns. And yes, deserted but well maintained cemeteries dot the desert floor giving names to those who lived and died along the railroad. And sometimes there is simply a weatherbeaten wooden cross fighting to stay upright in the blasting winds and relentless sun with no recognition of who lies below.

Many of the ghost towns have their own monuments to past residents

Amboy was such a town. A place that came into existence in 1858 as simply a watering hole for the trains belonging to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, later to be the Santa Fe Railway. In 1883 Lewis Kingman, a locating engineer, established the stop as an actual town and soon more and more folks were moving in.

The Church in Amboy, California

In 1926 the now famous Route 66 was completed and people were able to drive their Ford Model Ts, Pontiac 6s, Dodge Specials, or other vehicles all the way from the midwest to California. 

The love affair with cars and driving was in full gear. And the tiny town of Amboy was soon to become an iconic stop along Route 66 due to an enterprising couple who through happenstance soon made the railroad stop their home for decades.

Roy Crowl and his wife, Velma, ended up in Amboy in 1924 after a vehicle mishap, and not being able to afford the repairs stayed while Roy worked as a mechanic and other jobs and Velma became a cook at a couple of restaurants that were there at the time in Amboy.

In the late 1930s, Roy believed Amboy was going to be huge on the map along Route 66 since the vehicle traffic kept getting heavier by the month and purchased four acres of land. In 1938 Roy opened a garage, Roy’s Garage, to service any and all vehicles heading east or west out of town and soon his business was booming. His son-in-law Buster Burris, who had married the couple's daughter, Betty, went into business with Roy in the garage and opened up a parts store inside the garage. Soon though, Betty came up with the idea of their own cafe and confiscated the parts store for her restaurant.

The name was then changed to Roy’s Garage and Cafe. Soon the realization that travelers not only needed fuel, food, and repairs but also a place to spend the night gave the owners another business concept.

Cabins were built just east of the garage and cafe and the name was again changed to Roy’s Motel and Cafe.

Rental cabins to be used by guests at Roy's

In the 1940s the population of Amboy was reported at nearly 200 citizens with three small motels, restaurants, multiple garages, a church, a school, and a post office.

Amboy was certainly on the map for those driving Route 66,

When Roy retired in 1959, Buster not only maintained the motel, service station, and restaurant but also acquired the whole town which included other entities such as a Post Office and school.

Unfortunately, with progress often comes decline and that is what occurred when Interstate 40, a few miles north of Amboy was completed in 1973. Travelers now opted for the faster route instead of the single lane winding road of Route 66 which often meant stopping for trains at crossings or slowing through the towns along the roadway.

Almost all but Buster’s business closed, leaving the town pretty much empty except for a few hangers-ons.  Buster sold the town in 1995 to Walt Wilson and Tim White who used it as a film set and for photo shoots. But even that dried up, forcing the men to lose the town in a foreclosure which returned what was now a ghost town to Betty Burris, Buster’s widow.

As the town died, the citizens left derelict houses

Amboy went back on the market and finally was sold to Albert Okura, the owner of the popular chain of restaurants, Juan Pollo, in February of 2005.

Part of the deal was that Okura had to promise to preserve Amboy and reopen Roy’s. Perhaps Betty Burris did not understand that Albert was a man full of his own dreams and a lover of history.

In fact, he established the one-of-a-kind McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino of the site where the original McDonald’s restaurant was owned by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald.

Albert Okura knew what he wanted to do with this Amboy town which he had purchased - turn it back to how it looked in its heyday and welcome guests from around the world to come and enjoy this particular part of true Americana.

He was a man with a mission and a revamping of Amboy was started as soon as the ink dried on the escrow papers.

In Part 2 - Even after Okura’s passing in 2023, his dream is very much alive with his family and the staff working on taking Amboy off the ghost town rolls and making it a living historical landmark.

John can be reached at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Lighthouse along shore of Bras d'Or Lake in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Traveling often means discovering things that are sometimes unexpected. I’m not talking about such things as teenagers not functioning as humans before noon, or when your wife mentions that a restroom would be welcomed ‘soon’ which translates to means 'right now’ when the nearest town is an hour away.

No, those things are just facts.

It is those moments when traveling when one person turns to the other and utters, “Wow, check that out.”

Laureen, my lovely wife, and I had one such experience as we entered the town of Baddeck in Nova Scotia.

Baddeck is a quaint town sitting along the shores of Bras d’Or Lake. Despite its French spelling, the name is said to have originated from the native Mi'kmaq meaning ‘the long saltwater’, which stretches all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the wharfs along the water in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Baddeck looks like a Hallmark setting. A beautiful wharf with fishing boats, trees, and green grass stretching to the shoreline, fancy restaurants, vintage hotels, and a princess gazing into the distance for her prince.

Laureen told me that it was not a princess but a woman who dropped her phone into the water and was yelling at her husband to get it. But, I will stand by my story - her blonde hair was flowing majestically in the slight breeze as she scanned the horizon for her White Knight.

I’m a romantic, all truth be told.

The original Post Office in Baddeck where Bell would mail his correspondence

The town of Baddeck was founded in 1908, but the history goes way back to the 17th century when French missionaries started a settlement in nearby St. Anns in 1629, twelve miles to the north.

It is rumored the French declared, “Les Anglais ne connaîtront jamais cet endroit.”

Well, the English did find the area during the 18th century when the French were forced to give the whole territory to the British Empire.

It is also rumored that the French may have said, “Au diable les Anglaises.”

So, as Laureen and I entered the town to locate our hotel, we passed a large sign that suggested we may enjoy visiting a certain museum. 

And this is where that unexpected thing when traveling happens: it was the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

And as any good American, even though technically we were still in America, you know what I mean.  I was flabbergasted.

“They need tourism in Cape Breton so badly that they stole our inventor of the telephone?” I asked Laureen.

What next? This is where Sasquatch is seen more frequently than in the state of Washington, or Area 51? And he is really guarded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Turns out that Alec, as he liked to go by, had traveled to the Baddeck area years in the past and had fallen in love with the town.

The young Bell had started his life in Scotland but due to health problems, including the death of his two brothers to tuberculosis, his mother and father decided to move to the United States for a better climate.

It worked, and the young man soon became an inventing genius.  

At 18 years of age as he was working for a man who sold corn, Alec developed a method of instead of having manual labor shuck the stalks, a machine could do it.

It worked and Alec is credited with the saying, “Ah, shucks.”

As the years wore on Alec became more and more a man of invention. His father worked with various methods of assisting those without hearing actually to communicate and Alec made that part of his life goal. He became a speech teacher helping those, including Helen Keller.

In fact, his wife was a former student of his who was barely capable of hearing - but due to the extraordinary work from both his father and himself, Mabel was able to speak and read lips to the point that most did not realize she had any hearing issues.

It should be pointed out that Bell’s own mother was deaf but learned how to speak through the research and study by her husband who handed this down to his son.

Bell established the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890 and is still doing wondrous things to this day for the hearing impaired.

So, we wandered into the Alexander Graham Bell Museum and were blown away by what we learned.

The Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

In 1876, when Bell famously yelled into the telephone mouthpiece, “Watson, get me a ham sandwich.”  Life changed for the entire planet.

And that set Bell into the history books, which also made him a fabulously wealthy man.

A point learned at the museum was that Bell did not care that much about money. He enjoyed the benefits for humanity but when one of his inventions, and he had countless, went public he dropped interest and moved on to the next idea.

Missing Scotland, Bell convinced his wife that they needed to find a place that would bring that sense of home back to him.

They traveled here and there, with his newfound funds, and happened to stop by Baddeck on one of their adventures.

With the lure of the green hills, tall trees, huge estuary, and rivers, this was the place for him. 

Mabel and Alec settled on a point called Megwatapatek, named by the Mi’kmaq meaning ' Red Head’ due to the reddish sandstone rocks at the end of the peninsula.

The Bells purchased 600 acres and built a beautiful home there and other residences for family members. The property is still owned by the descendants and no non-family members are allowed unless they are guests.

Looking across Bras d'Or Lake at the Bell estate

I tried, even showing my press pass. 

I did not know how cold the waters of the  Bras d’Or Lake were in late June until the security personnel tossed me into them.

The museum was enlightening into the life of Alexander Graham Bell.

Most think of him only as the inventor of the telephone, but he was so much more.

He had a total of 18 separate patents and 12 he shared with other brainiacs which included devices to assist the deaf, phonographs, multiple telegraphs at one time, photographs, metal detectors, and so much more.

We spent hours within the large museum marveling at this and that. All the inventions Bell was involved in were amazing. His wife once said that got his greatest creative ideas by floating in the waters by their house in Baddeck while smoking a pipe, an event that could fill an entire day.

A mockup of Bell's private study in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

He always carried a small notebook and scribbled notes in it constantly.

I suggested Laureen take that stance when I was floating in our pool at home with a cold adult beverage but her eyes rolling stopped that idea.

Bell even got into human flight.

He loved kites and often over the peninsula where their home was, the folks in Baddeck may have seen a dozen various colored and shaped kites skirting the breezes above their land.

The fight for dominance of who could put a human into the air was intense - some guys by the name of the Wright Brothers were doing it but everything was in secret, but Bell believed in publicity.

So, on February 23, 1909, Bell along with a host of like-minded fellas, launched the Silver Dart into the air off the shores of the Baddeck estate, creating the first powered heavier-than-air craft in Canada with a human.

A few years later, Bell and those engineers around him came up with the first hydrofoil concept of a plane that could take off and land on water.

On September 9, 1919, the vehicle took off from the waters of Bells Home and reached a speed of nearly 71 miles per hour.

A replica of Bell's hydrofoil on display.

Though through the years the concept would become indispensable for the military, when the First World War was done, there was not much interest in Bell’s idea.

It was decades later that the military realized Bell was far ahead of almost everyone and now hydrofoils are utilized by all branches of the service.

 In a fitting farewell for one of the United States' most prolific inventors, during his funeral after his death on August 2, 1922, every phone in North America was silenced in tribute to the inventor.

Even in death, Alexander Graham Bell was to be noticed.

For further information: Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site (canada.ca)

John  can be reached at: beyersbyways@gmail.com