The unincorporated town of Amboy sits on the stretch of the historic Route 66 between the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. To get there, head east on Amboy road out of Twentynine Palms. The straight desert road curves north through the Bullion Mountains to a vast expanse of salt flats and utility poles. Bright blue rivers formed by salt mining operations streak across the otherwise still, light beige of the desert.

Eventually, Amboy Road will end in the near ghost town of Amboy. The unofficial town slogan is “The Ghost Town That Ain’t Dead Yet!” When the nearby Interstate 40 opened in 1973, travellers stopped passing through. When the travellers stopped coming, the residents moved out. According to the most recent census, only four remain. One of those four is named Kevin. You’ll find him pumping gas, selling root beer, and if you’re lucky, sharing stories of Amboy’s only functioning business and that of his employment, the gas station/café Roy’s. Next door, Roy’s Motel is closed. Across the street, the post office is closed. The school, closed in 1999, remains filled with racist graffiti, soviet-era text-books, and likely, the screaming ghosts of the long gone school children. In a 2010 flood, the old tree down from Roy’s floated away. Down Route 66, two Temple Dogs (giant white statues that look more like lions) still stand 6-feet tall.

Amboy is owned by Albert Okura, who also owns the Juan Pollo fast-food chain. In 2003, Okura put Amboy up for sale on e-Bay for $1.9 million. It remains for sale to this day.

Although Amboy was first settled in 1858 by salt miners, the town was not established until 1883. Lewis Kingman, a locating engineer for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, created the town as the first of a series of alphabetical railroad stations that were to be constructed across the Mojave Desert. In 1926, Amboy became a boomtown after the opening of U.S. Route 66. In 1938, Roy’s Motel and Café opened, which prospered due to its isolated location on the route. By 1940, Amboy’s population had increased to 65. Its growth was tied not only to tourists, but also to the Santa Fe Railroad over which high-speed freight trains still run today. During the Great Depression and World War II, tourism declined nationally. But the remaining travelers need for lodging, meals, and gasoline kept the town busy. The town remained this way until the opening of Interstate 40 in 1973, which bypassed Amboy.

Amboy was originally owned by Buster Burris who sold the town in 1995 to investors who mainly used it for photo and film shoots. After the investors lost it in foreclosure, it was repossessed by Bessie Burris, Buster’s widow. Bessie sold the property in 2005 to Albert Okura, owner of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain for $425,000 in cash and $100,000 so far on restoration. Albert has faced challenges in getting basics such as electricity and water services restored and operative. His restoration hurdles predominantly involved Amboy’s infrastructure, most of it had been laid by Buster Burris himself (not to current building codes). Okura has experience with preservationist efforts and stewardship, being the owner of the Original McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California, which he operates as a museum. Unlike the investors, who wanted to maintain Roy’s and Amboy in a “weathered” condition for use as in film shoots, Okura plans to fully restore Roy’s to its former glory as a “nostalgia tourists” destination, and Route 66 rest stop for travelers en route to and from the Colorado River scenic and recreation areas.

When I reached the salt flats between wonder valley and Amboy, the landscape opened up and I felt like I had landed on the moon. 80 mph. Faded pink. Muted beige. Sprawling. Endless.

There was nothing ahead of me for what appeared to be miles; the land seemed to extend and foreshorten simultaneously. I drove through the salt flats - the horizon line a blur in which there were moments when I couldn’t tell where the earth ended and the sky began. I drove down into the valley — 80 miles per hour. 85. 90. Beige, pink, brown, white. The salt flats reflected silver in the haze of the late afternoon sun — flashes of light in my peripheral vision; a sea of broken glass. The road began to turn and my GPS told me I would soon turn on to National Trails Highway. Shortly thereafter I reached Amboy, nickname: “The ghost town that ain’t dead yet.”

Amboy Road came to a T. There was a freight train disappearing into the desert on my left and a handful of buildings down the road to my right. I turned right towards the town and crossed over the train tracks. A huge sign rose ahead of me, lit not by neon, but by the afternoon light:

“Roy’s Motel and Cafe — Vacancy,” it read.

Lots of it.

In 1956 the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed, allowing new interstate highways to be built. By the mid-70s, the I-40 had been built between Barstow, California and Wilmington North, Carolina, and cut off traffic for many of the businesses along Route 66. There are now miles and miles of abandoned diners, gas stations and other businesses along the route, Roy’s being one of them.

“Are you Roy?!?” I asked the attendant inside the cafe, eyes as wide as saucers. He smirked a little; grey t-shirt, medium wash 501s, slicked back silver hair, clear blue eyes and an easygoing smile. He gave me an incredulous smile. “No.” “I bet you get that question a lot,” I replied, laughing off my ridiculous question. We introduced ourselves — his name was Kevin.

There are ten people that live there in Amboy at any given time. Kevin is one of them. He works at Roy’s. The diner’s kitchen no longer functions and they sell nothing save for a small selection of snacks and cold drinks, a few souvenirs, and gasoline from the old pumps. The dining room and kitchen appear to be in perfect working condition, but the handwritten sign above the counter that reads “NO KITCHEN” makes it clear that it’s not. The motel is abandoned.

It’s a living relic of American history.

I was fascinated with the gas station and the man working there in the middle of nowhere. I knew I wasn’t the first person to visit this place or be smitten by its sheer existence, but I felt like I had discovered it myself and immediately claimed a tiny sense of ownership. Kevin was kind enough to field my questions and eventually offered me a root beer and found an old photo album of the town. We sat at a table in the café and went through photos — old black and white photos from when the town was more bustling — pictures of the school, the church…sepia-toned anonymous faces. He attended to the occasional gas customer, albeit a bit impatiently as he suddenly had company. We sat and talked until dusk, as I was anxious to get back to Joshua Tree before dark.

I ended up spending a lot of time with Kevin during that week in Joshua Tree. He showed me around the old motel which he holds the key to, as well as the remaining buildings in the small town. What started as a friendly conversation turned into three days of driving around showing each other our favorite sites between Yucca Valley and Needles. He showed me some of his favorite weird sites along Route 66 - an abandoned diner, the shoe tree, the giant foo dogs, and the graffiti gas station. If you find yourself driving along Route 66 and go through Amboy, stop at Roy’s and please say hi to Kevin for me.

(excerpt from the 2015 Institute of Investigative Living reader)

Just southeast of Amboy is a snowy white dry lake (the remnants of a large ancient inland sea) and a series of long trenches with bright aqua colored water. The white crystallized formations are calcium chloride and sodium chloride, types of salt typically used as road salt and common table salt. The network of long narrow evaporation ponds are created by the National Chloride Company and Tetra Technologies Co. to produce salt from a brine solution pumped from wells beneath the lakebed. The surface “playa” layer of sand, clay, gypsum, and some volcanic ash, ranging from three to seven feet thick, is excavated in order to get at the underlying salt, and dumped in long rows of conical piles along the trenches. The water is eliminated through natural evaporation, allowing the salt to be subsequently harvested. Salt has been extracted from the dry lakebed since 1858, and it is estimated that there are still some 60 million tons of salt in reserve. Core sample in the 1950s found salt at a depth of over 1000 feet.