Amboy, a ghost town in California that longs for the golden years of Route 66

Route 66 is one of the most famous highways in the world. Opened on November 11, 1926, it connected Chicago and Los Angeles.

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That route, stretching 3,940 kilometers, traversed eight US states. This very long highway became an inexhaustible source of stories for many citizens of that country for decades. In the 1970s, the construction of our interstate highways doomed Route 66, which was officially removed from the United States highway system on June 27, 1985.

Many towns that depended on Route 66 languished after its closure. One of them was Amboy, in the Mojave Desert of California. This town was founded in 1858 as a mining settlement. Nearby is an inactive volcano, whose last eruption occurred about 10,000 years ago. The heart of Amboy was Roy's Motel & Cafe, founded in 1938, which was an important rest and resupply stop for travelers on Route 66. One of the longest stretches of Route 66 (307 km), which connected to Victorville, ends in this California town, now a ghost town.

Amboy had a Catholic parish, dedicated to Saint Raymond, under the Diocese of San Diego. It was inaugurated in 1951 and closed on August 3, 1970; its church still stands today. The town also had a school, inaugurated in 1903 and closed in 1999 due to a lack of students.

In 2003, Amboy, with only 7 inhabitants, was put up for sale for $1.5 million, but no one wanted to pay that amount for a ghost town in the middle of the desert. Two years later, Albert Okura (1951-2023) bought the town for $425,000, reopening its gas station and beginning a restoration process of Roy's Motel & Café that continues to this day.

A month ago, the channel Through My Lens posted a video showing this ghost town and Roy's Motel & Café, in which a lonely teddy bear sits waiting at the bar for the golden age of Route 66 to return and for someone to finally be brave enough to serve him a drink:

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Main image: Through My Lens.