Amboy

Amboy is the most photographed empty place on Route 66, and Roy's is the reason. Roy Crowl opened a gas and service station here in 1938, at a lonely bend where the old road crossed the salt pan of Bristol Dry Lake; his son-in-law Herman 'Buster' Burris built it out through the 1940s into a full stop, cafe, garage, and a row of motel bungalows, running around the clock while several hundred people lived in town. The soaring boomerang sign, pure Googie space-age optimism, went up in 1959. Then Interstate 40 bypassed Amboy in 1972, and, as Burris put it, business went to zero almost overnight. The town emptied; the sign kept glowing over an all but abandoned highway, and Hollywood came for exactly that emptiness. In 2005 Albert Okura, founder of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain and owner of the original McDonald's museum in San Bernardino, bought the whole town, roughly 950 acres, for 425,000 dollars, promising to restore it rather than let it weather away. He reopened the gas station and gift shop in 2008 and relit the restored neon in 2019. Okura died in 2023; his son Kyle and the family now run the place, working toward reopening the cafe and cottages by Route 66's centennial in 2026. For now the pumps work, the gift shop is open, the post office still sorts mail, and the sign still stands against the sky. Amboy Crater rises two miles southwest. There is nothing else for miles, which is the whole point of stopping.