Apple Valley’s Hilltop House: A Reluctant Goodbye
Built in 1957 by oil baron and town founder Newton T. Bass and his business…
Apple Valley’s Hilltop House: A Reluctant Goodbye
Built in 1957 by oil baron and town founder Newton T. Bass and his business partner and brother-in-law Bud Westlund, the Hilltop House wasn’t just a home — it was a modern desert mansion perched on Miner’s Hill like Apple Valley’s crown jewel. From its spot 300 feet above the Apple Valley Inn, it commanded…
Kelso Depot: Back on Track in 2026?
The Kelso Depot—formerly the Kelso Depot, Restaurant and Employees Hotel, and now home to the Mojave National Preserve Visitor Center—sits in the heart of the Mojave Desert within the National Park Service’s Mojave National Preserve. Kelso Depot is one of the Mojave National Preserve’s star attractions—it played a major role in shaping the history of…
Project Carryall: Almost a Blast From the Past
The Bristol Mountains rise between Ludlow and Kelbaker Road like a long, sun‑scorched barricade, the kind of range that looks less formed than forged. On one side, Route 66 snakes past in its slow, nostalgic way, carrying the ghosts of road‑trippers and the last stubborn believers in Americana. On the other side of that big…
Road Runner’s Retreat on Route 66: A Light to Remember
Chambless, California, located about ten miles east of Amboy, is a ghost town now. But travel a mere mile and a half west of where the settlement used to be, and you would have found the Road Runner’s Retreat, a true desert landmark on Route 66. Dominating the landscape was a massive 30-foot-wide sign, its…
Route 66 Recollections From a Desert Highwayman
Now, if you’re thinking this might be a story about the storied ‘Highwaymen’ of years long passed, you might want to read on and become elucidated a bit on southwest lore. Because this, dear friends, is a story about those desert dwellers who built and maintained the roads between Needles, California, and all points west…
My Achy Breaky Hart
During the Panic of 1907, a financial crash that began with a severe drop on the New York Stock Exchange, James Hart and the brothers Bert and Clark Hitt, discovered pockets of rich gold ore in rhyolite on a steep slope in the Castle Mountains, approximately 4 miles south of the 23-miles long Barnwell &…
Slowjamastan: No Crocs Shall Pass
Where does one go when the heart suddenly decides it craves foreign adventure and uncharted lands? In our minds, we’ve always been seasoned globetrotters — the kind of people who sip tiny coffees in distant plazas and nod knowingly at train schedules we can’t read. In reality, we have never stepped foot outside the United…
Murray’s Ranch: The Only Black Dude Ranch in the World?
At the northwest corner of Waalew Road and Dale Evans Parkway in Apple Valley, just across the road from the Los Ranchos Mobile Home Park, is a vacant piece of desert with a few cement foundations and a smattering of trees near Bell Mountain. Next time you drive by there you might want to know…
A Desert Legacy So Far
While this may appear to be a stock photo of the Beverly Hillbillies visiting Joshua Tree National Monument in 1965, it is, in fact, my father driving his creation, a heavily chopped and modified 1950 Ford with a flathead V8 and 3 on the tree. One of the earlier varieties of soon-to-be popular sand and…
A Remembrance of Cucamonga
Not quite the desert, but Cucamonga was on the border. At the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, Route 66 was still the way to or from the great Mojave, from where I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. I remember many trips to Cucamonga to explore the abandoned stone houses of early…
