A Mirage That’s Real
Somewhere between Needles and Barstow, with the Mojave Desert spread flat in every direction and nothing on the horizon but mountains and heat shimmer and the occasional BNSF freight train, a shape appears on the south side of Route 66 that stops travelers in their tracks every time. A 50-foot neon sign, red and white, in the swooping boomerang shape of Googie architecture’s most confident period, rising above a compound of low desert buildings like an exclamation point placed in the middle of a sentence that has no other punctuation for miles. This is Roy’s Motel and Café, at 87520 National Trails Highway, Amboy, California 92304, and it is the single most photographed, most filmed, most marveled-at landmark on California’s 314-mile stretch of the Mother Road. It is a gas station and a café and a motor court and an auto repair shop and a mid-century architectural marvel and a ghost town and a resurrection and a Route 66 story that has more chapters than most: a couple whose car broke down in the Mojave in 1924, a son-in-law who built a whole town by hand, a day in 1972 when business went to zero overnight, a New York photographer who bought the wreck, an eBay listing nobody bid on, and a Japanese-American businessman who paid $425,000 cash on the courthouse steps and promised a dying widow he would bring it back. The sign has been relit. The gas pumps are running. The 2026 Route 66 Centennial is approaching. Roy’s is not done yet.
Where Is Roy’s Motel and Café?
Roy’s Motel and Café is located at 87520 National Trails Highway, Amboy, California 92304, on the National Trails Highway (Historic U.S. Route 66) in the Mojave Desert town of Amboy, San Bernardino County. Amboy sits roughly halfway between Needles and Barstow on the old Route 66 alignment — approximately 80 miles west of Needles, 80 miles east of Barstow, and about 50 miles north of Twentynine Palms. The nearest interstate access is I-40 at Exit 78; from there, take the National Trails Highway west approximately 12 miles to Amboy. Alternatively, from the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley area, take I-10 to CA-62 through Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, then head north on Amboy Road to the National Trails Highway. Roy’s is on the north side of the highway in the center of Amboy — the 50-foot neon sign is visible for miles in either direction.
Amboy, California: A Town That Route 66 Built and Route 66 Abandoned
Founded by the Railroad: 1858 and 1883
Amboy began not as a community but as a coordinate. In 1858, the area was first documented as a mining camp. In 1883, when Lewis Kingman, a locating engineer for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, laid out a series of alphabetically named railroad stations across the Mojave Desert, Amboy received its “A” designation as the first in the sequence: Amboy, Bristol, Cadiz, Danby, Essex, Fenner, Goffs — a geographic alphabet marching east from Barstow to Needles across the desert floor. The railroad gave Amboy its existence; the National Old Trails Highway (the predecessor of Route 66, formalized in 1914) gave it the possibility of tourism. But it was Route 66 that gave it its golden era.
Roy and Velma Crowl’s Breakdown: 1924
The founding story of Roy’s Motel and Café begins with a breakdown. In 1924, Roy and Velma Crowl were passing through Amboy when their car gave out, leaving them stranded in the Mojave. Unable to pay for the repairs, Roy took work as a mechanic and later as a dragline operator with California Rock Salt at the Bristol Dry Lake salt operation nearby; Velma found work as a cook at one of Amboy’s existing cafes. The desert that had trapped them became their home. When the time came to build their own business, they built it where they had been stranded.
Route 66 Transforms Amboy: 1926 and After
In 1926, the new federal highway system designated U.S. Route 66, and the alignment through Amboy — following the pre-existing National Old Trails Highway and the railroad corridor — became part of the great cross-country highway. Route 66’s 1931 realignment made Amboy’s position even more central: the new route bypassed Goffs to directly connect Needles and Essex, making the road through Amboy the primary California Route 66 alignment and eliminating a major competitor for through traffic. By the 1930s and 1940s, Amboy had a population of about 200 people and 13 businesses: three service stations, two cafes, three motor courts, four garages, a post office, a church, and a school. Every vehicle crossing the California desert on the main highway had to pass through Amboy. Roy’s was waiting for them.
Roy’s Motel and Café: From Service Station to Desert Empire
Roy’s Garage Opens: 1938
In 1938, Roy Crowl opened Roy’s Garage — a gas and service station on Route 66 in Amboy, built (according to family history) with Buster Burris partly from railroad ties. The station positioned itself at the center of what Amboy would need most: fuel and mechanical service for travelers making the long, brutal crossing of the Mojave Desert in vehicles that were nothing like the climate-controlled, computer-managed cars of today. Overheating, flat tires, vapor lock, and engine failure were common enough on the desert crossing that a well-equipped gas station and garage was not a convenience but a necessity.
Buster Burris Builds a Town
The expansion of Roy’s was inseparable from the work of Roy’s son-in-law, Herman “Buster” Burris, who joined the operation in the 1940s and became the most consequential figure in Amboy’s modern history. Burris and Crowl expanded Roy’s to include a café, an auto repair garage, and an auto court of small cabins for overnight rental — the full-service complex that travelers on the desert crossing needed. Roy’s daughter Betty Crowl converted a storeroom built next to the garage into the café, establishing the restaurant that would feed travelers for decades.
But Buster Burris’s contributions to Amboy went far beyond the Roy’s complex. He is credited with building much of the town’s infrastructure almost single-handedly: he brought electricity to Amboy from Barstow by personally erecting power poles and stringing wires alongside Route 66, using an old Studebaker pickup truck. Without Burris’s power line, there would have been no electric lights, no refrigeration, no cooling in a desert that regularly exceeds 100°F. He built the road infrastructure. He built the water system. He built or significantly developed virtually every permanent structure in Amboy during the decades of his stewardship. Buster Burris did not merely run a business on Route 66 — he built a community in the desert, piece by piece, with his own hands.
The Post-War Boom: 24 Hours, 7 Days, 70 Employees
The post-war years were the golden era of Roy’s. After years of wartime rationing of tires, gasoline, and new automobiles, Americans took to the roads in enormous numbers after 1945, and the Route 66 corridor through the Mojave was as busy as it had ever been. By the 1950s, Amboy’s population had swelled to approximately 700 people, with about 10 percent employed at Roy’s. The operation ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the volume of business was sufficient that Buster Burris placed classified advertisements in newspapers across the country to recruit employees. At its peak, Roy’s employed approximately 70 workers in a town of 700 — a concentration of employment at a single business that was extraordinary even by the standards of Route 66’s most prosperous era.
The Googie Neon Sign and Theme Building: 1959
The defining architectural moment in Roy’s history came in 1959, when the complex received the two features that define its visual identity to this day: the 50-foot neon sign and the Googie-style reception and office building. The neon sign — a sweeping, boomerang-shaped structure with illuminated script lettering reading “ROY’S MOTEL CAFÉ” — was designed to be visible for miles across the flat desert, a beacon signaling that fuel, food, and shelter were available in the emptiness. It succeeded beyond any ordinary roadside sign’s ambitions: the Roy’s sign became one of the most recognized silhouettes in American roadside culture, reproduced in paintings, photographs, films, commercials, and music videos innumerable times over the following 65 years.
The reception and office “theme building”, added the same year, is a classic piece of Googie architecture: an exaggerated upswept roof pitched dramatically over extensive glass walls, with the angular geometry and structural expressionism that characterized the American roadside aesthetic of the late 1950s. Googie architecture — named for a Los Angeles coffee shop designed by John Lautner in 1949 — applied the visual vocabulary of the Space Age and the Atomic Age to roadside commercial buildings: swooping rooflines, cantilevered elements, boomerang shapes, and the conspicuous use of glass, steel, and neon to project an image of modernity and forward motion. Roy’s theme building, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, was Googie at its most elemental: as far from the suburban coffee shops and bowling alleys where the style typically appeared as you could get, it was the architecture of the future marooned in the ancient geology of the desert floor.
Interstate 40 and the Overnight End: 1972
On the day Interstate 40 opened through the Mojave in 1972, taking through traffic off Route 66 and onto a faster, more direct alignment to the north, Amboy’s economic foundation collapsed. Buster Burris said it plainly: “Business went down to zero the day I-40 opened.” Not gradually — overnight. The travelers who had sustained Amboy’s population of 700 and Roy’s workforce of 70 simply did not come anymore, because the highway they had been using no longer connected the places they were going. Roy Crowl died in 1977; Roy and Velma had retired in 1959, leaving the operation to Betty and Buster. Buster continued running the diminished business for as long as he could, though by the 1980s his famously short temper with travelers he deemed unacceptable — he reportedly chased off “rowdy bikers and men with long hair” at gunpoint — limited the customer base further. The neon sign stopped functioning in the 1980s. Amboy’s population, once 700 at its Route 66 height, fell to about 20 by 1990 and continued falling.
The Photography Era: Timothy White and Walt Wilson, 1995–2005
In 1995, Timothy White, a New York celebrity photographer, leased the entire town of Amboy from Buster Burris, installing his friend Walt Wilson as on-site manager. White saw value in Amboy and Roy’s not as a functioning roadside business but as a filming location — specifically, as a place whose weathered, worn-out, decaying character made it ideal for productions seeking authentic Route 66 patina without the inconvenience of a fully functioning town. White and Wilson deliberately maintained Amboy in a state of intentional dilapidation, discouraging restoration in the service of cinematic authenticity. They continued selling gas, food, and Route 66 souvenirs at Roy’s, but at prices that became notorious: a single glass of tap water reportedly cost $1.00 in the café. Management was described by visitors as surly, and the combination of high prices, limited hours, and inhospitable staff made Roy’s a destination travelers approached with caution rather than anticipation.
White purchased the property outright from Burris in February 2000 for $710,000. Buster Burris, the man who had built Amboy with his own hands, died later that year at age 91 on August 10, 2000. White offered the town for sale on eBay in 2003; there were no buyers. The property went into foreclosure in February 2005, and ownership reverted to Bessie Burris, Buster’s widow. Bessie offered the property on the San Bernardino County courthouse steps; no bidders appeared. In March 2005, with the help of her granddaughter Bonnie Barnes, Bessie declared the town for sale for one week, to the highest bidder at noon on a Friday.
Albert Okura Buys Amboy: $425,000 and a Promise
The bidder who appeared was Albert Okura — a Southern California businessman who owned the Juan Pollo chain of restaurants and who had already demonstrated his commitment to Route 66 preservation by purchasing the site of the original McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino and operating it as the Original McDonald’s Museum. Okura acquired approximately 950 acres containing the entire town of Amboy and the Roy’s complex for $425,000 on May 3, 2005. He made a personal pledge to Bessie Burris: to restore Roy’s, maintain its original Route 66 aesthetic, reopen it, and create a museum showcasing Amboy’s history. Bessie visited and worked with Okura collecting memorabilia until her death at age 91 on May 17, 2008, in nearby Wonder Valley.
The Restoration Challenges
The challenge Okura faced was not architectural but infrastructural. Most of Amboy’s utilities — the power lines, the water system, the plumbing — had been built by Buster Burris himself, by hand, to the standards of the mid-20th century, which were not the standards of contemporary California building codes. Bringing the infrastructure up to code while preserving the visual and historical character of the buildings required years of work and close to $100,000 in restoration costs for Roy’s alone. The coffee shop and gas station were refurbished and reopened on April 28, 2008 — the first functioning business at Roy’s since the foreclosure. A new septic system was completed in June 2024, addressing one of the most fundamental water management challenges in the desert environment.
The Neon Sign Restoration: November 16, 2019
The restoration milestone that most visibly announced that Roy’s was coming back was the relighting of the 50-foot neon sign on November 16, 2019 — more than 30 years after it had gone dark. Albert Okura had new neon tubes manufactured, had the sign repainted in October 2019, and held a lighting ceremony that was attended by Route 66 enthusiasts from across the country. When the sign came on for the first time, it was visible from miles across the flat Mojave desert exactly as it had been in 1959 — a boomerang of light in the darkness above the desert floor, doing exactly what Buster Burris had built it to do: let travelers know that Roy’s was there.
Kyle Okura and the Path to 2026
Albert Okura died in 2023 at age 71, before completing his restoration project. His son Kyle Okura has continued the family’s commitment to Amboy. Kyle has defined his own vision for the site: as a filming location (Olivia Rodrigo filmed a music documentary at Roy’s), as a potential music festival venue described as a “mini-Coachella,” and as a fully restored Route 66 destination for the 2026 Route 66 Centennial. As of late 2024 and 2025, the Okura family has targeted the cafe and six historic motel cottages for reopening by 2026. In November 2025, a major cleanup initiative involving the community and San Bernardino County took place at Roy’s and adjacent Route 66 areas to support the ongoing restoration. In March 2025, Roy’s received a feature segment on NBC’s Today show, generating fresh national attention to the restoration effort.
Googie Architecture: What Makes Roy’s Visually Unique
The term Googie describes a subset of mid-century modern commercial architecture that flourished in the United States from the late 1940s through the 1960s, characterized by bold geometric forms, upswept rooflines, cantilevered structures, extensive glass surfaces, and the conspicuous use of materials and shapes that evoked the Space Age and atomic modernism. Named for a 1949 Los Angeles coffee shop by architect John Lautner, Googie became the dominant aesthetic of American roadside commercial design during the highway’s golden era — the visual language of diners, motels, bowling alleys, and gas stations along Route 66 and across the American highway network at mid-century.
Roy’s 1959 additions express Googie at its most elemental. The reception theme building — with its dramatically pitched upswept roof tapering to a narrow rear overhang above walls of glass — is one of the most architecturally distinctive small commercial buildings on California’s Route 66 corridor. The boomerang-shaped sign tower, rising 50 feet above the desert floor, translates the same angular, forward-thrusting geometry into a three-dimensional steel and neon landmark that is recognizable from photographs even without text identifying its location. Together, the sign and the office building created a visual identity for Roy’s that was not merely effective roadside advertising but genuine architectural expression — a statement of confidence and modernity in one of the most extreme desert environments on the American highway.
Roy’s on Film: A Hollywood Favorite
The combination of Roy’s Googie architecture, the 50-foot neon sign, the abandoned motor court, the surrounding Mojave Desert landscape, and the atmospheric patina of decades of exposure to desert sun and wind has made it one of the most sought-after film and photography locations in the American Southwest. Documented productions shot at Roy’s include:
- The Hitcher (1986): The tense thriller starring Rutger Hauer filmed scenes at Roy’s Gas Bar, using the station’s desolate desert setting to establish the horror of isolation on the American highway.
- Qwest Communications commercial (1999): Both the reception area and the neon sign appeared in a television commercial for the telecommunications company — the most visible mainstream media exposure the site received during the Timothy White era.
- Enrique Iglesias “Hero” music video: The Spanish pop star’s global hit was filmed partly at Roy’s, associating the landmark with one of the most-watched music videos of the early 2000s.
- California’s Gold with Huell Howser (1993): The beloved California public television host visited Amboy in episode 410 of his landmark series, interviewing Buster Burris about Roy’s and the Amboy Crater.
- Harrison Ford and Anthony Hopkins: Both actors have autographed photos on the restaurant’s walls. Harrison Ford, who flies his own plane, frequently landed on the adjacent Amboy Airfield — one of the first airports built in California — for visits to Roy’s.
- Olivia Rodrigo music documentary: The contemporary pop star filmed a music documentary at Roy’s under the Okura family’s stewardship, reflecting Kyle Okura’s vision for Amboy as a filming and music destination.
- JJ Wilde “Arizona” (2024): Canadian singer JJ Wilde used footage filmed around Roy’s for her 2024 single.
- 18 Wheels of Steel Haulin (video game): A fictional version of Amboy, including Roy’s sign, appeared in the trucking simulation game.
- Blur (2010 racing game): Amboy features in several tracks of the racing game, bringing Roy’s visual identity to a global gaming audience.
What to Do at Roy’s Today
The Gas Station
The Roy’s gas station is fully operational, with restored vintage pumps and regular hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Gasoline is available, though prices are higher than at stations in Needles or Barstow due to the delivery costs involved in supplying fuel to a remote Mojave Desert location. For travelers on the National Trails Highway, Roy’s is one of the only fuel options for many miles in either direction, making a stop for fuel prudent regardless of how full your tank is when you arrive. Attendants are on site and can provide full service.
The Coffee Shop and Gift Shop
The original Roy’s Café building currently operates as a coffee shop and gift shop, selling cold drinks (including root beer floats, an Amboy signature), snacks, candy, and an exceptional selection of Route 66 and Roy’s branded merchandise. Reviewers have praised Roy’s gift shop as having some of the most well-crafted brand-specific souvenirs anywhere on Route 66 — mugs, magnets, shirts, and keepsakes that reflect a genuine design sensibility rather than generic highway kitsch. Inside, visitors can browse binders of news clippings, photo shoot documentation, and historical keepsakes accumulated over decades. The full cafe kitchen — with its hot food menu — remains the target of the Okura family’s 2026 restoration plan.
The Motor Court and Neon Sign
The six historic motor court cottages surrounding the central courtyard palm trees are among the most evocative elements of the Roy’s complex — small, individual bungalow units of the kind that preceded the modern motel form, each with its own door facing the central space where travelers once parked their cars and socialized in the evenings. The cottages have been repainted and are visually restored; the Okura family targets them for rental availability by the 2026 Route 66 Centennial. The 20-room motel block is also under ongoing restoration planning. The 50-foot neon sign, restored and relit in November 2019, illuminates the desert nightly — exactly as it did in 1959.
Photography and Atmosphere
Whether or not the café is serving hot food when you visit, Roy’s is one of those places where simply being there — standing in the parking lot, looking up at the sign, walking the motor court, examining the Googie architecture of the office building in the context of the desert that surrounds it — is a complete and fully satisfying experience. No other stop on California’s Route 66 produces the visual impact of Roy’s sign against the desert sky, particularly at dusk or dawn when the light is low and the neon is illuminated. Bring a wide-angle lens. Budget time to simply sit and absorb where you are.
Amboy Crater: A 6,000-Year-Old Volcano Next Door
One mile south of Roy’s on the National Trails Highway, a brown BLM sign points south toward Amboy Crater — a 246-foot basalt cinder cone that is the product of several explosive volcanic eruptions, the most recent approximately 6,000 years ago. The crater is accessible via two BLM trails: an easy, well-marked path to the base, and a more demanding route to the rim that rewards visitors with sweeping views of the Mojave National Preserve, the Bristol Dry Lake salt flats, and the railroad corridor stretching to Needles. From the rim, the Bullion Mountains rise to the south and the Granite and Providence Mountains define the northern horizon. Cars on the National Trails Highway and freight trains on the BNSF main line are visible as tiny objects in the enormous landscape. The crater trail begins at a BLM trailhead with parking; no fee is required. Bring at least two liters of water per person per hour of hiking, start early in the morning to avoid desert heat, and wear sun protection.
The geology of the crater rewards attention: the rocks are visibly varied in texture, from highly porous vesicular basalt (where gas bubbles were trapped in cooling lava) to smooth, dense lava bombs — lava thrown from the vent that cooled during flight into rounded, egg-shaped projectiles. The crater’s chocolate-colored interior, the white salt surface of Bristol Dry Lake to the south, and the vast horizontal scale of the Mojave combine to create one of the most otherworldly landscapes anywhere in California. Amboy Crater, in the context of a Route 66 road trip, is one of the most compelling non-highway reasons to leave the road and spend a few hours in the desert.
Practical Tips for Visiting Roy’s
- Address: 87520 National Trails Highway, Amboy, California 92304
- Website: visitamboy.com
- Hours: Gas station 7 a.m.–8 p.m. daily. Coffee shop/gift shop hours may vary; check visitamboy.com for current information.
- Getting there: From I-40, take Exit 78 and follow the National Trails Highway west approximately 12 miles to Amboy. From the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley, take I-10 to CA-62 through Twentynine Palms, then north to Amboy Road to the National Trails Highway. The 50-foot neon sign is visible from miles in both directions.
- Fuel: Roy’s is the only fuel stop in Amboy. Fill up at Needles or Barstow before arriving, but do not leave without topping off. Gas prices are higher than city rates due to the remote location, but the alternative is running out of gas in the desert.
- Water: Bring your own water from the city, especially in summer. Desert heat in the Mojave regularly exceeds 110°F in July and August. One gallon per person per day is the minimum; two is safer.
- Best times to visit: October–April. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 115°F; July is the absolute peak of desert heat. If you must visit in summer, arrive before 8 a.m. and plan to be back in an air-conditioned vehicle by 10 a.m.
- Photography timing: The Roy’s sign is best photographed at dusk or dawn when the neon illuminates against the darkening or brightening sky. The Googie architecture is most dramatic in late afternoon golden light from the west.
- The Amboy Crater: Turn south at the BLM sign one mile west of Roy’s. The trailhead has parking. Bring 2+ liters of water per person, start before 9 a.m., wear sun protection, and do not attempt the crater rim in temperatures above 90°F.
- Restrooms: Portable restroom facilities are available on site; quality varies. Plan accordingly.
- Cell service: Cell coverage is minimal to nonexistent in Amboy. Download offline maps before leaving the last city. Tell someone your itinerary.
- 2026 Centennial: The Okura family has targeted 2026 for the reopening of the café and motel cottages. If your visit is timed to the Route 66 Centennial year, check visitamboy.com for the latest status of the restoration before you go.
Final Thoughts: Why Roy’s Matters
Roy’s Motel and Café is not the most comfortable stop on Route 66. The café kitchen may not be fully open when you arrive. The motel rooms are not yet available. The desert heat will test your preparation. The gas is expensive and the cell service is gone. But none of that is why Roy’s is one of the places every serious Route 66 traveler considers essential.
Roy’s is essential because it is the single most complete surviving example of what Route 66 was in the Mojave Desert during the highway’s golden era — a compound of buildings and a sign that express, in architectural form, everything the highway meant: the promise of the road, the audacity of Googie modernism in the middle of the desert, the human courage of a couple whose car broke down in the Mojave in 1924 and who stayed, and stayed, and built, and built, until a town existed where there had been nothing but train tracks and dry lake beds. The 50-foot neon sign is on again. The gas pumps are running. Kyle Okura is planning the café and the cottages for 2026. The desert is patient. Roy’s has survived everything the century has thrown at it so far, and the centennial is coming.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights in California
- Route 66 in San Bernardino, California — The Original McDonald’s Museum site (owned by Albert Okura, the man who saved Roy’s), the Wigwam Motel, and the full Route 66 heritage of San Bernardino County’s Route 66 corridor.
- The Wigwam Motel, San Bernardino — Sleep in a wigwam! The iconic Route 66 teepee motel in San Bernardino, a California Historic Place and one of only three surviving Wigwam Villages in the country.
- Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to America’s most legendary highway, all 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica.
