On March 20, 2015, the Stars and Stripes rose over the Hinkley Post Office for the very last time. We stood there as the flag came down, marking the end of a chapter for the tiny desert town 14 miles west‑northwest of Barstow, California. Hinkley’s post office had been serving residents since 1908, but like…
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…
You may be familiar with the large marble Chinese Guardian Lion statues between Route 66 and Kelbaker Road but did you know Amboy may have once had its very own living African lion? “Old Man Miller,” as he was known in the Amboy area, was the first person to spot a large African lion near…
We originally referenced 100 of our favorite desert books five years ago. We still enjoy browsing museum gift shops and used book stores for nuggets of gold in the form of guidebooks, nature guides and history books. Discovering obscure out-of-print books is extra fun. Many new books have been published recently that also deserve our…
Cafes and rooming houses in Daggett sprang up. These were used as meeting places for business, as well as entertainment. One of the more popular joints was known as “Ma Preston’s”…
We had an amazing adventure exploring lovely Afton Canyon. The Mojave River flows above ground here and ranges from a small creek to a couple of feet deep depending on seasonal rainfall totals. Afton Canyon lies in part along the old Mojave Indian Trail, near the 35th parallel, that extended from the Colorado River to…
Victorville and Route 66: 7th Street meets D Street, and the year 2018 meets the roaring ’50s. The Hotel Stewart was originally the Turner Hotel more than a hundred years ago, and was serving full-course dinners for 35 cents back in 1936. Decades make a difference, and along with fires and demolitions crews, time has…
It’s a cool desert evening on November 18, 1954, and the day’s show is over at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the emerging Las Vegas Strip. Still, the show must always go on. The young entertainer, along with his valet, Charles Head, are getting ready for an all-night drive to Studio City, near…
Have you ever wondered what it used to look like in the Mojave Desert of yesteryear? When ingenuity and pure desert grit was king? Do you want to learn secrets the desert has to tell? They’re all around us if we just look. Please join us for one of many trips through time illuminating the…
Greetings from Camp Cady, California! Armistice Day (later to be named Veterans Day) is still about 60 years away, but here we are, taking you back in time to the loneliest, meanest U.S. Army outpost in the United States, a year before the Civil War went hot. It is a day in 1860, and we’re…