The Ghost Town of Amboy and the ‘Strangest Land Rushes in California History’ – Wonder Valley

Southern California has several ghost towns and unincorporated enclaves struggling to survive. Two of the more interesting communities in Southern California are Amboy and Wonder Valley. Each of these unincorporated communities offers a unique blend of history, mystery and stories of life struggles in the Mojave Desert.

This brief post only touches briefly on these locations because I had spent most of the day exploring Amboy Crater. Click here to be redirected to the Amboy Crater blog.

Amboy - Rags to Riches to Rags Population Zero

The journey from Twentynine Palms to Amboy offers an amazing view of the expansive desert landscape. Paved roads, where they exist, stretch out to the horizon, with mountains and hills emerging from the desert floor. It's astonishing how any community can thrive in such an environment.

Suddenly, a highway sign emerges, and the remnants of Amboy, California come into view.

The history of Amboy is marked by cycles of growth and decline tied to shifts in transportation routes. Initially settled by salt mining interests in 1858, Amboy was officially established in 1883 as the first in a series of water stops when the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks through the Cadiz Valley in 1883-84. Steam engines needed a dependable water supply, making these ‘watering towns’ crucial for the lengthy trek across the Mojave Desert. In the late 1800s, railroad cars filled with water were delivered to Amboy, and every business and home had their own water tanks. Today there is still evidence of these water tanks although they are no longer in use..

Life in Amboy chugged along peacefully until 1926, when it became a boom town after the opening of U.S. Route 66. Route 66 is one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System.

The highway, which became one of the most famous roadways in the United States, ran from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles.

Route 66 was a primary route for those who migrated west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and it supported the economies of the communities through which it passed. Communities, like Amboy, with business along the route became prosperous. This photo from 1926 shows the original dirt road passing through the center of Amboy.

In 1938, Roy Crowl opened Roy's as a service station on Route 66 in Amboy. Roy, together with his wife Velma, owned the town. In the 1940s they teamed up with their son-in-law, Herman 'Buster' Burris, and expanded the business, keeping it open 24 hours a day. Shortly afterwards, they established the iconic Roy's Cafe and Motel. Business boomed in the deluge of motor tourists after World War II.

Records from the 1940s reveal that Amboy had 13 businesses, including three service stations, two cafes, three motor courts, four garages, a post office, a church, and a school. Its population exceeded 200 residents. Amboy was no longer just a railroad 'watering town'.

On February 1, 1959, the famous 50-foot 'Roy's Motel and Cafe' neon sign was erected. It's considered the most photographed sign on Route 66.

Roy and Velma operated Roy’s until they retired in 1959. Ownership of the town and property was then transferred to their daughter Betty and her husband Buster. The cabins at the motel now stand abandoned but are open to explore.

The original motel lobby is now decorated in midcentury horror.

Historical records show that Amboy's population once reached around 700 residents. A community of this size required various services. A Post Office operated from different locations until 1965 when Buster constructed a modern post office across from the gas station. Although Amboy currently has no residents, the Post Office is open daily with limited hours. If I planned better, I would have brought something to mail to get an Amboy postmark. It seems it's only a matter of time before the office is forced to close.

The Amboy School was originally built in 1903 but was later relocated to its present location. The school had only two rooms, one room was the first to fourth graders and the other was for the fifth to eighth graders. Once the students graduated from the eighth grade, they went to a high school 66 miles away in Needles, CA. Historical records indicate in 1991 one kindergarten student and 3 eighth grade students graduated from the school. In 1999, the school closed after the last student moved away. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to explore inside the school.

Here is a photo of the 1945 graduating class and the 1970 yearbook photo of Roy Crowl and then School Principal Fred Ansiel.

Life in Amboy proceeded steadily until the 1970s when additional interstate highways were built, gradually rendering Route 66 a relic of the past. Although Route 66 remained in place, it was no longer the only route to travel across its stretch of the country.

Amboy - Ghost Town with Population Zero

So why did Amboy become a ghost town? In 1972, Interstate 40 was built about 10 miles north and ended up routing nearly all traffic away from Amboy, basically killing the entire town. Almost overnight, residents moved away and businesses disappeared. By the 1980s, the famous neon sign was no longer lit. In 1995, things really began to spiral out-of-control when Timothy White (pictured below) and his business partner, Walt Wilson leased the entire town from Buster.

White, a celebrity photographer, saw value in maintaining the property in a weathered, worn, dilapidated condition as a filming location. In February 2000, he bought the property from Buster for $710,000. The handful of buildings in Amboy, once modern and stylish, were in desperate need of repair, but White was uninterested in making any improvements. He allowed the property to fall into disrepair. In 2003, when he realized Amboy was a losing venture, his attempt to sell the town on eBay .

AMBOY, Calif. (AP) -- A 150-acre Mojave Desert town on Route 66 failed to sell after a month-long auction. Bidding on the auction site eBay ended Friday after a month on the Internet auction site with no offers reaching the minimum reserve price. Amboy, with seven residents, has a listed value of $1.9 million, but the top bid reached only $995,900. It was below the price that the sellers would be willing to accept, said Rob McManus, estate director for Dilbeck Realtors, which is selling the town for Christie's Great Estates.

White and Wilson eventually drove the town to ruin. In February 2005, Amboy faced foreclosure, leading the partners to relinquish control and return ownership to Bessie, Buster's wife. Within weeks, Bessie sold Amboy to Albert Okura for $425,000 in cash, along with commitments to preserve the town and reopen Roy's.

Despite the Okura family's best effort to reinvigorate Amboy, the remaining residents continued to leave. In 2016, the official census count was 4 residents but in 2024, the census identified no residents — population ZERO.

Amboy is still a wonderful place to stop and poke around. Route 66 and the most of the buildings are abandoned but the spirit remains in the places left behind.

Wonder Valley: A Haven for People Needing to Disappear

Just a short drive from Amboy lies Wonder Valley, a sparsely populated unincorporated area in the Mojave Desert. A local pastor summed life in Wonder Valley, 'This is a great place to run away from something. From a bad relationship, from debt, from bad parents, fears. People can run away here in the desert and hide quite well.'

This Google satellite image, with Wonder Valley marked in red, illustrates why his statement is so accurate.

Wonder Valley did not exist as a community until after 1938, when Congress passed the Small-Tract Act (STA), making 5-acre parcels of federal land available to the public for a nominal fee. The greatest concentration of these parcels was located east of Twentynine Palms, the area that became Wonder Valley. In order to receive a patent to the land, the government’s version of a deed, the homesteaders were required to pay a small lease fee of $5.00 per year, paid in advance, with an additional fee for surveying and document fees. The homesteaders were required to construct a cabin-type dwelling, and make $300 of improvements within the lease term to retain ownership. At which time they could apply for a patent and purchase the property at the unimproved appraised value of the land. In the 1940’s the land appraisals varied between $10 and $80 an acre. The era of 'jackrabbit' homestead cabins took off.

Many homesteaders took great pleasure in building cabins with their own two hands. Others purchased prefab cabin models from Homestead Supplies, located in two locations within the Morongo Basin. These homes were referred to as 'jackrabblt homesteads'

Construction companies even sprang up offering prefab units readymade to satisfy Land Office requirements.

No one is sure when the vast arid desert first became known as Wonder Valley, or even exactly why it was named such. One story that is often referenced is that early owners used to name their properties and hang signs to show off their homes. One home referred to as 'Wonder Valley' seemed to encapsulate the dreams and aspiration of local landowners and the name stuck.

Unfortunately, after getting a taste of the harsh desert lifestyle, thousands of cabins and other structures built by homesteaders, during the 1950s were abandoned. The land’s remoteness and lack of any infrastructure were perhaps the biggest obstacles to property owners.

Obviously, this cabin was reoccupied long after it was originally abandoned. Today fewer than 4000 of the original jackrabbit homestead cabins still remain.

What the Los Angeles Times called "one of the strangest land rushes in Southern California history" died down by the late '50s. Expectations were too high, and the desert too rough. In 1976, the Small Tract Act was repealed and this corner of the Mojave became a blank space once again

More recently, Wonder Valley has earned a reputation for being a fashionable destination for artists and their works. The 'The End of the World' sign, created by artist Jack Pierson in 2012, is one of the more famous art installations in Wonder Valley and it's a fitting way to wrap up this unique Mojave Desert adventure.