Ghost Towns of Route 66 (23 page)

By the mid-1980s, the settlement that survived more than a century in one of the most inhospitable places in America had dwindled to less than a shadow of its former self. The bypass of Route 66 by Interstate 40 in the early 1970s, and the subsequent bulldozing of most of the town by the major land owner, Buster Burris, to avoid tax liabilities, hastened its abandonment.

There are indications that salt mining may have taken place near the site of Amboy, as it does today, shortly before the opening salvo of the Civil War. However, it was the establishment of a railroad siding and water stop by the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad in 1883 that literally put Amboy on the map.

Before the rise of Roy's Cafe, with its towering sign, Amboy was a dusty oasis in a sea of desert.
Joe Sonderman collection

As such, the little encampment languished until the establishment of the National Old Trails Highway during the teens and the designation of its replacement, U.S. 66. The
Hotel, Garage, Service Station, and AAA Club Directory
of 1927 indicates the population was one hundred and the primary service available was the J. M. Bender Garage.

Notes by Jack Rittenhouse in 1946 clearly indicate the importance of Route 66 in these remote desert communities. “Pop. 264—this desert community consists of two cafés, a garage, and café.”

The postwar travel boom and the endless stream of traffic on Route 66 kept the businesses in Amboy busy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They also ensured continued expansion of the miniscule town, and by 1960, the business district included a motel, a second service station that offered gasoline for forty-nine cents per gallon when the national average was somewhere around twenty cents per gallon, and a very busy towing company.

The unofficial mayor of Amboy, Buster Burris, shepherded the small desert community from the infancy of its glory days to its demise. He arrived on the scene in 1938 to assist his father-in-law, Roy Howard, in the management of a motel business. This endeavor soon expanded to include a garage and café, Roy's.

By the early 1950s, Amboy was a boom-town. Three shifts of mechanics worked in the Burris garage, and there was seldom a vacancy at the motel or cabins.

With the completion of Interstate 40 in 1972, Route 66 reverted from a river of gold to an empty, forlorn stretch of dusty asphalt across a desert wilderness. Business in Amboy evaporated quicker than snow in July on the sunbaked pavement. Buster Burris, who eventually owned most of the town, kept the station going for a few more years, but the writing was on the wall.

By the late 1990s, the area population had dwindled to less than fifty. This, however, was not the final chapter.

The resurgent interest in Route 66 led chicken tycoon Albert Okura, founder of Juan Pollo and owner of the original McDonald's in San Bernardino, California, to purchase the entire town in 2005—including the airstrip, Roy's, the church, the schoolhouse, and the remaining houses—from Burris's widow, Bessie. His vision is to transform what remains into a showpiece reflecting the essence of Route 66 circa 1960.

A few miles west of Amboy, Bagdad was even tinier than its neighbor. The 1939 WPA
Guide to California
claimed the population was twenty, and the 1940 census placed it at twenty-five residents. Adding to the mental picture of just how desolate the area was, Rittenhouse says, “Skeletons of abandoned cars are frequent along the roadside.” He also records that “Except for a few railroad shacks, this community consists solely of a service station, café, garage, and a few tourist cabins, all operated by one management. At one time, Bagdad was a roaring mining center.”

The Amboy School has long been closed.
Jim Hinckley

The tangible links to a long and colorful history in Ludlow are fast succumbing to desert winds, time, and vandals.

There are vague indications that the origins of Bagdad date to as early as 1875 with the establishment of a small camp at the site and mines in the surrounding mountains. However, it is the construction of a siding in 1883 by the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad that serves as Bagdad's agreed-upon date of origin.

The growth of Bagdad—what there was of it, anyway—centered on the railroad, which supplied the needs of remote mines in the area, specifically the Orange Blossom and the War Eagle, as well as shipping ores from a nearby mill. By 1889, the town was large enough to warrant a post office. Two decades later, the remote outpost of civilization consisted of a small depot, a commissary, saloons, a hotel, and even a Harvey House restaurant that catered mostly to railroad employees.

Following the closure of the area's largest mines, a devastating fire erased most of the business district in 1918. The second blow, consolidation of railroad service and repair in Needles and Barstow, followed almost immediately. Only the traffic on the National Old Trails Highway, and later Route 66, prevented complete abandonment.

Today, Bagdad is a historical footnote. Only sand-obscured concrete foundations, a sign designating a railroad siding, a forlorn but surprisingly well-maintained cemetery, and an unofficial railroad record indicating 767 consecutive days between 1912 and 1914 without rain remain to mark its place in history. This is truly a Route 66 ghost town.

Ludlow maintains a faint pulse in the form of a café, service stations, and a motel that serve the occasional Route 66 or Interstate 40 traveler. These businesses, as well as the array of remnants in various stages of decay, hint of better times but offer little clue that—long before the designation of a highway as U.S. 66—this was a town with a promising future.

Ludlow, as with most Route 66 towns in the Mojave Desert, owes its founding to the railroad and the establishment of sidings at regular intervals during the early 1880s. Moreover, the town named for railroad employee William Ludlow, as with other railroad stops in the desert, owed its initial growth to mining. There the similarities end.

A shortage of dependable wells in Ludlow necessitated the shipping of water by rail from Newberry Springs to the west. By 1900, the limitations on growth were resolved, and Ludlow began to prosper as a supply center. Further fueling growth and the town's prominence in the summer of 1905 was the establishment of the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad, which linked the main line with the mining boom in the area of Tonopah, Rhyolite, and Beatty in Nevada. Following this line was the establishment of another spur line, the Ludlow & Southern Railroad, which connected the main east–west line of the Santa Fe Railroad with the Buckeye Mining District eight miles to the south.

The boom fueled by the railroad spurs was beginning to ebb when motorists began rolling through town on the National Old Trails Highway. In his 1946 guidebook, Rittenhouse notes, “Although quite small, Ludlow appears to be a real town in comparison to the one establishment places on the way here from Needles.”

While most of Ludlow's remnants date to the glory days of Route 66 (roughly 1946 through the 1960s), there are a few notable exceptions. Among these are the 1908 Ludlow Mercantile, severely damaged in a 2006 earthquake, a few old homes, and a haunting desert cemetery.

Gas stations like this once crowded both sides of the highway in Ludlow, but today only one remains open.
Joe Sonderman collection

The listing of generator repair as a service offered dates the ruins of a garage along Route 66 in Ludlow.
Jim Hinckley