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The Roadrunner’s Retreat near Chambless, California

11/1/2019

The Roadrunner’s Retreat is a mile and a half west of Chambless and 10 miles east of Amboy, California on National Trails Highway, formerly Route 66. The business consisted of a restaurant and service station that was started by Roy and Helen Tull in the early 1960s.

Roy Tull was a truck driver and envisioned the Roadrunner's Retreat as a truck stop strategically positioned on Route 66 between Needles and Barstow. While construction was still underway Roy sold the 40-acre property to F. B. “Duke” Dotson who formerly owned and operated Duke’s Western Wear in Montclair, California. Roy and his wife Helen may have operated the café for a couple of months, but soon after it opened in 1962 Dotson took over and ran the service station and restaurant as a truck stop and towing service. In 1963 the rest of Dotson’s family, his wife Virginia, and their two sons and daughter moved out to the desert and settled into a mobile home parked behind the restaurant. Duke Jr. recalls that when he arrived, fresh out of the 6th grade, his dad told him to put on an apron and start bussing tables. He said that he thought his life had come to an end moving from Ontario out to this place in the desert.

Roy Tull’s wife Helen worked in the restaurant for a short time with the help of several local women who served as waitresses, one of whom was Lola Joyce Nelson, a Navajo Indian who lived nearby at the railroad depot at Cadiz. It was not uncommon at the time on Route 66 for a man and wife team to arrive looking for work. If there were openings Dotson would hire the husband to work either in the restaurant as a cook or at the service station and the wife worked as a waitress.

The Standard Oil service station just east of the cafe was built with a distinctive Googie-inspired upswept roof, an architectural style that was popularized in the 1950s and 60s, influenced by the up and coming Space Age, the Atomic Age and Jets. In addition to the service station / garage, Dotson also ran a towing service with the help of a Texan named John Gwen. Together, John and Duke, and of course their German Shephard “Ace”, built and maintained all of the trucks and “fixed everything that was broken”. Duke’s first tow truck was named “King of the Road”, but all of the other trucks were named after bears: “Smokey”, “Papa Bear”, “Mama Bear”, “Teddy Bear”, and “Grizzly Bear”.

Today both the cafe and service station are boarded up and slowly deteriorating. While The Roadrunner’s Retreat was open a small community of a dozen or so mobile homes grew up behind the diner and provided living quarters for some of the employees who worked in the restaurant and the service station, but all of those have now either been removed or are also in ruins. The Roadrunner closed in 1973 when Interstate 40 was opened between Needles and Barstow and this section of the highway was bypassed. All of the roadside businesses on this stretch of Route 66 through the Mojave Desert between Essex and Ludlow died almost overnight. Businesses that depended on tourist and commercial traffic – service stations, restaurants, motels, car repair shops – were all forced to close. Duke Jr. remembers that when his father made the decision to close they were in the restaurant for most of the day and their only customer was a railroad employee who stopped in for a cup of coffee and not a single car went by on the highway.

After the Roadrunner’s Retreat closed Dotson sold the property to the Murphy family who are still the current owners. Mr. Murphy never intended to reopen the restaurant; his interest was more toward having a desert retreat and in maintaining the site for its historic significance on old Route 66. Before he passed away Mr. Murphy was able to enjoy memorable weekends on the property with his family.

Today both the cafe and service station are boarded up and slowly deteriorating. While The Roadrunner’s Retreat was open a small community of a dozen or so mobile homes grew up behind the diner and provided living quarters for some of the employees who worked in the restaurant and the service station, but all of those have now either been removed or are also in ruins.

The distinctive neon sign next to the highway that advertised the Roadrunner’s Retreat, although weather-beaten and pale, still stands and is immediately recognizable as one of those iconic symbols on this stretch of old Route 66 and there are tentative plans in place to re-light the sign although the service station and restaurant will remain closed.

Chambless, California

5/14/2018

Lat 34° 33.6643’ N.
Long 115° 32.6631’ W.

Chambless is known by several names – Chambless, Chambless Junction and Cadiz Junction, but to local residents it is just “Cadiz”.

Today the small settlement of Chambless stands on National Trails Highway and bears little resemblance to the busy intersection it once was. The most prominent landmark is an abandoned service station and general store surrounded by a chain link fence and with boarded up motel cabins in the rear. There are some homes in the area, only a few of which have permanent residents.

Jim and Fannie Chambless circa 1926 at their original home and Red Crown service station on what was then designated National Old Trails Road.

The place was named after James and Fannie Chambless who operated a service station and general store on Route 66 when the highway was a dirt road and was about a half mile north of the current paved highway. Jim and Fannie lived there with their two children, Melvin and Pearl, and Jim’s mother, Ellen.

Jim [James Albert] Chambless was a native of Portales, New Mexico, and came to California in the early 1900s. He built a service station on the dirt road that was then called National Old Trails Road, later renamed as Route 66.

When Route 66 was paved and realigned to where it is now, Jim and Fannie’s service station was left stranded on the old road about a half mile north of the new highway so, in the 1930s, they moved their store to the new location on the main highway.

The new store cost about $7,000 to build and was run by Jim and Fannie with help from one of Fannie’s friends, Mrs. McRae, from Long Beach. There was no electricity at the time, so they had a small generator on the back porch that ran off a Chevrolet engine. Chambless was not connected to the rural electric grid until 1964. For water, Jim drilled a well on the property using piping and machinery from the Orange Blossom Mine north of Bagdad, which was in bankruptcy at the time and was in the process of being abandoned.

So why is it referred to as Cadiz?

Chambless service station after being rebuilt on Old National Trails Road. Circa 1930.

In years past the BNSF railroad depot at Cadiz, 3 miles south of Chambless, also housed the Cadiz post office. In 1967 the railroad decided to close the depot so the post office was forced to find a new location. The Cadiz postmaster at the time was Andrea Limon. By this time, passenger traffic on the railroad had dwindled to practically nothing so there was no compelling reason to keep the post office near the railroad. Therefore, for the convenience of mail deliveries Andrea moved the post office into a small trailer up on the highway across the road from the Chambless General Store. However, shortly thereafter the postal service required a more permanent building so in 1972 Andrea built a small stucco building on the property and that became the post office.

By the time that the post office was relocated from the Cadiz depot to Chambless the Chambless family were no longer there. Andrea did not want to go through all of the paperwork changing the name of the post office to Chambless and so she just kept the name ‘Cadiz’ and the same zip code. Consequently, even to this day local area residents refer to Chambless Junction as “Cadiz” because it was the location of the Cadiz Post Office. The small stucco building on the north side of the highway in Chambless that once served as the post office was later converted to a residence after the post office closed, is still there but is unoccupied and in disrepair. Andrea served as postmaster from 1966 until she retired to Twentynine Palms in 1995.

The “Cadiz” post office in Chambless, circa 1975.

Jim Chambless died in 1940 (1879 – 1940) and his son, Melvin, took over the job of running the store and the service station. About 1944, Melvin sold the store to William and Willa Riddle who, with their son Jack, ran it as a Shell station and later as a Richfield station. Jack Riddle retired to Hemet in 1964 and sold the property to Steve and Lorraine Stephens who operated the store until they retired to Twentynine Palms in 1991. In spite of the market changing hands several times, the intersection retained the name of the original owners and is still shown on maps as Chambless or Chambless Junction. Fannie Chambless retired to Barstow when her husband died, and she passed away in 1966. Jim, Fannie, and Ellen Chambless, James’s mother, are all buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Barstow.

The store was expanded over the years to include several improvements and somewhere along the lines the owners added motel cabins on the south and east side of the store. Most of the cabins behind the store are gone, but the ones to the east were more robust and are still there but are completely abandoned.

The service station changed hands and brands many times over the years. Originally Jim operated as a Red Crown gas station, but in later years the station was operated by Mobil Oil, Shell, and Arco. The awning over the gas pumps was torn off during a freak tornado that rushed through the area and was never rebuilt.

Even after Interstate-40 was opened in the early 1970s the Chambless store and gas station remained open because people in The San Diego and Palm Springs area of California realized that they could get to the casinos in Laughlin easier by going through Twentynine Palms and Amboy, and via Chambless, than by using I-15 and I-40. That continued for a few years, but eventually the Chambless store suffered the fate of all of the other businesses along old Route 66 that depended on highway travelers and was forced to close as traffic dwindled.

Chambless General Store present day. The awning over the gas pumps was blown down during a violent windstorm in the 1980s.

The market is now an abandoned building surrounded by a chain link fence. About 2008, a large piece of the tin roof was blown off in a wind storm, and although there is occasional mention of the store being reopened, the building becomes more dilapidated each year. Most of the motel rooms that were behind the market have been torn down and the desert is trying its best to reclaim the land.

Desert Engineering

5/14/2018

A hot water heater

Mount a bathtub on a metal stand about a foot high. Fill the tub with water. Submerge a coil of copper tubing in the tub with one end of the tubing connected to a water spigot and the other end to a shower head inside a trailer. Build a fire under the tub. The heated water in the tub will warm the water in the tubing. Open the spigot and, voilá! Hot water flowing to your shower.

This particular masterpiece of engineering was built by my friend Paul Limon in the back yard of his weekend getaway trailer in Chambless, California. When Paul was proudly showing me his contraption, I just had to smile. I don’t know what the circular lid is for; perhaps just decoration!

Abandoned Miner's Cabins

8/15/2017

One of the many abandoned and relatively undiscovered cabins in the Mojave Desert. This one was constructed using railroad ties and is well over 100 years old.

Unfortunately crass vandalism and exposure to the elements has taken its toll on what little remains of these historic relics of the Mojave's mining past. The condition of the abandoned home sites I have encountered range anywhere from being nothing more than an obscure foundation to a few remnants of what once were walls, but the cabin shown below is unique in that it still has glass in the window and the front door.

In my travels in the desert I have come across dozens of sites such as this, but am careful to keep their locations to myself. This helps protect them from those who would do them harm and also contributes to the sense of discovery for others who may also stumble across them at some later time.

The name of who built and lived in this cabin remains a mystery.

The smaller images below are snapshots of other deserted cabins that I have encountered in the desert, and except for the dwelling built of stone, all are in various stages of collapse.

The Ludlow Cafe

7/26/2017

The Ludlow Café, on the east end of Ludlow, California and facing old Route 66, has unfortunately finally succumbed.

The café was run by Rex and Lilian Warnix from about the late 1930s until the early 1960s, but whether they were the ones who first built the café is uncertain. Most of the property on the east end of Ludlow was acquired by Laurel and Cameron Friend about 1963 and they continued to operate the café in addition to the Ludlow Restaurant until they moved to Colorado about 1975.

Although it has been abandoned, for decades the café remained relatively unscathed until about 2007 when the interior caught fire, either deliberately or by accident by travelers who were camped in the building. The fire accelerated the deterioration of the building and, sadly, today it is only a pile of rubble.

Train vs Tank

7/23/2017

Lat 34° 14.7972’ N.
Long 115° 05.0447’ W.
Little remains to mark the site where the accident occurred.

The results of a collision between a M3 General Lee tank and a Santa Fe train early one morning in 1942 near Salt Marsh in the Mojave Desert. The tank is overturned and the turret is upside down just to the left of the tank hull. One tank crewman died during the collision and another died later of his injuries. These and other interesting stories are contained in my book, The Silence and The Sun.

My Desert Tortoise Episode

9/18/2016

One weekend while camped in the Mojave Desert at an abandoned mine on the side of a low hill – it was at one of my favorite spots because the tailings from the mine provide a nice flat space to park my Jeep and set up a tent. The mine faces east, is high enough on the hill to provide a nice view of the desert, and the morning sun strikes the camp early. On this night I was awakened about 2 a.m. by the distant boom of thunder. I could see frequent flashes of lightening in the distance and it was obvious a big storm was moving in from the southeast. For a brief moment I was tempted to just crawl into the mine shaft, a few feet back from the entrance and out of the weather. The mine tunnel was about six feet high and I knew it to be over four hundred feet long. A colony of bats lives at the far end of the mine, but at this early hour I figured that they were probably out hunting insects. If I slept on the floor of the mine just inside the entrance there should be no problem with me blocking their route when they returned at dawn. Where I had set up my camp was safe from any chance of flooding, but there was a dry wash at the base of the slope that if it filled with water could pose a problem with me getting out later in the day – a flash flood might leave the wash strewn with rocks and boulders and I didn’t want to risk being stuck here while I rebuilt a way across.

Reluctantly, I climbed out of my sleeping bag, secured the camp so that things could not get wet or blow away, tossed my sleeping bag in the Jeep and drove out on to a broad flat stretch of the desert floor where there was no danger of flash floods. I wiggled back into my sleeping bag, reclined the driver’s seat as far as it would go, and immediately went back to sleep - but not for long. Within a half hour the storm hit with a vengeance and was by far the most intense rain storm I have experienced in the desert. Lightening was all around and was very frequent. There was no time lapse between the lightning strikes and the clap of thunder; the storm was right on top of me. The rain fell thick and loud on the roof of the Jeep. I kept trying to remember all of the stories I had heard about what to do in lightening storms and whether or you were safe in your car because of being surrounded by metal and the non-conductive rubber tires. However, here I was in a cloth top Jeep Wrangler. All I had around me was a thin covering of canvas and a metal roll bar. I couldn’t help thinking about my CB antenna sticking up prominently from the rear tailgate, but I wasn’t about to go outside to disconnect what is probably a perfect lightening rod in the middle of an electrical storm! (I learned later that although a person is safe in an automobile, a canvas top affords no protection in an electrical storm.)

The storm continued for an hour or so and at some point I fell back asleep. Santa Fe woke me early the next morning as one of their locomotives lumbered past a few miles away. The air was crystal clear after the rainstorm and there was not a cloud in the sky. I squirmed out of my sleeping back and prepared to drive back up to the mine where I was camped to put on a pot of coffee when I noticed the tortoises. They were everywhere! I got out of the Jeep and walked around the area and saw literally hundreds of tortoises of all sizes. The rain must have flushed them out of their underground burrows, and here they were munching on fresh leaves and bumping into each other on the wet sand. The smallest ones probably measured 2 inches, and the larger ones were eight to ten inches. I was awestruck - literally. There were so many of them that I could not have driven without the risk of driving over some of them – there were that many! I left the Jeep where it was and hiked the quarter mile or so back up to the mine and had a leisurely breakfast and packed up my camp, giving the tortoises time to scatter. By 10 o’clock that morning they were gone. I walked a long circuitous route back to the Jeep, enjoying the clear morning air, and in the mile-long walk I saw only three or four of the tortoises still out among the creosote bushes. By the time I got to the Jeep and started the slow drive back up to the mine, they were entirely gone; I did not see a one.

The memory of this will stay with me for a long time. I witnessed a rare and unique event and I felt privileged to have seen it. I was in the right spot at exactly the right time. It occurred to me later that if I had spent the night in the mine instead of driving out on to the desert floor to wait out the rainstorm I would have missed this entirely. It is not uncommon to come across a desert tortoise when driving back roads in the desert, but I had never seen even two at the same time before this morning. So much for their endangered species status!

The House on the Hill

8/11/2016

34° 38.0395’ N. Lat.
115° 10.5866’ W Long.

From about 1962 to 1967 Helen Mae and Ervin Smith lived in a cabin made of railroad ties near the pass between the Piute Mountains and the Old Woman Mountains, near Weaver’s Well with their six children in what they referred to as “The House on the Hill”. During this time Ervin worked at the Mobil Station in Essex for Eunice Gallanari and Helen worked as a substitute postmaster for Rose Stringham at the Post Office in Fenner and also filled in at the Essex Post Office.

Each day Helen and Erv made the 9-mile commute from the House on the Hill down to Essex to go to work and to take the children to the Essex school. They had a generator alongside the house, but used it mainly only when guests visited. Their water was hauled up in barrels from Essex.

The children – Ervin Jr. ‘Skip’, Donna, Sharon, Sherree, Melinda and Toni remember the mid – 1960s, when they lived here, as “Some of the best times of our lives”. Although the house is no longer there, the site is easily identified by a concrete foundation that once served as the floor.

I have been fortunate to have met four of the family members, interviewed Helen (twice), Melinda and Sharon once each, and toured the site with Sharon and Melinda in 2007.
Ervin Smith passed away in 1985. Helen eventually moved to Needles and I was fortunate to be able to meet her and to hear some of her stories before she passed away in 2008.

Rattlesnake; Carbonate Gulch; Old Woman Mountains

8/11/2016

In all of the years I have been traveling back roads in the desert I have only seen two rattlesnakes, one in Ward Valley, and this one in Carbonate Gulch. This guy was not making a fuss, but he was ‘prepared’. He was ok with me taking his photo – I used a long telephoto, and he and I went our separate ways.

Tarantula in Ward Valley, October 2010

8/11/2016

This fellow was photographed in Ward Valley in October, 2010 – one of hundreds of tarantulas that we saw that weekend during what I suppose was a migration of sorts – they were everywhere. This guy was kind enough to pause while I took his picture.

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The Roadrunner’s Retreat near Chambless, California

Chambless, California

Desert Engineering

Abandoned Miner's Cabins

The Ludlow Cafe

Train vs Tank

My Desert Tortoise Episode

The House on the Hill

Rattlesnake; Carbonate Gulch; Old Woman Mountains

Tarantula in Ward Valley, October 2010

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