Category: Essex

"Hank's Place", East Essex, California

10/2/2023

About a half mile east of Essex, at the junction of National Trails Highway and Goffs road was the site of a Texaco service station that was commonly known as “Hank’s Place”, named for Hank (Henry Joseph) Cusson who wanted to get out of the San Diego construction business.  Hank purchased the property from a woman named Frankie Moran who was anxious to leave Essex after her husband died.   Whether the Morans are the ones who first built the place is uncertain.  After purchasing the property Hank moved his family to Essex and operated the business from 1960 to about 1972.

The original Texaco service station was a wood frame building that caught fire from an overheated kitchen grill in 1968 and was destroyed.  Hank rebuilt the place with help from his relatives who flew in from New England, and this time he used corrugated tin siding instead of wood.   When completed the business was operated as a truck stop and consisted of a Texaco gas station, garage, café, a towing service and a 2,000-foot runway out back.  Hank was an accomplished pilot and residents of Essex at the time recall that it was not uncommon for California Highway Patrol officers to fly to Hank’s Place for lunch.  They also remember Hank being somewhat of a ‘daredevil’ pilot and having several minor accidents with his plane, a Cessna 140 and later a Cessna 172.  In emergencies he also occasionally flew injured motorists to the hospital in Needles.

The business was run by Hank with the help of his wife, Elva, two of his children, and occasional employees who lived on the premises.  Hank also sold used cars when the opportunity presented itself by scavenging parts and assembling vehicles from those that had been abandoned by unlucky motorists.

Shortly after the Interstate-40 was completed in the early 1970s California passed an ordinance that underground gasoline storage tanks had to be renovated.  The cost of the upgrade combined with the downturn in highway traffic on Route 66 forced the service station to close, but the business continued to operate for a while as a garage, towing business, and café.

Hank sold the property about 1972 and retired to Kingman, Arizona where he passed away on April 22, 2002.  His estranged wife, Alva, was in a nursing home in Long Beach, California at the time and died there on the same day as Hank.

Levi Gudmundson purchased the property from Hank and ran the business from about 1975 – 1982, and 1985 - 1990/91, and in later years the business went through several different owners, but in the late 1990s or early 2000s the business finally closed permanently.  Today the site is in ruins with only the shell of the café still standing amidst a field strewn with rubble and trash.

"Hank's Place" in East Essex prior to the fire that destroyed the building in 1968.

July 29, 1968 when Hank's Place in East Essex caught fire and was destroyed. Patrons seated in the cafe were initially unaware of the fire. Hank was returning to Essex from Needles, saw the smoke from the highway, and rushed in to get everyone out. This photo was taken by a passing motorist who later sent the photo to Hank.

Photo taken in 1977 of the the rebuilt cafe in East Essex. A TV antenna is being installed on the roof of Hank's cafe. 1977 was the year that Essex was able to receive television service.

Henry (Hank) Cusson (L) with his step son, Joe Schreiner (R) near Hank's Cessna at East Essex.

The remains of Hank's Place; photo taken in 2018.

Essex, California

9/30/2023

Essex has seen better days. When Interstate-40 was completed in the mid-1970s the 70-mile stretch of highway between Ludlow, California and Fenner was bypassed, and towns like Essex and businesses that depended on motorists – motels, service stations, garages, and cafes - died almost overnight.

Essex is in eastern San Bernardino County, California, about 45 miles west of Needles and was initially established by the Southern Pacific Railroad (later the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, and now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway) in 1883 as a railroad maintenance camp. It was originally called Edson, but sometime prior to 1915 the name was changed to Essex -- the railroad retained the precedent of naming the stops between Amboy and Needles in alphabetical order – Amboy, Bolo, Cadiz, Danby, Essex, Fenner, etc. The railroad facilities in Essex at the time were nothing more than a converted box car that was used as a ‘station’, a section house for the railroad workers, and a house for the superintendent and his family.

Original "Essex depot", c. 1929.

By most accounts, the residential and business community of Essex that was not associated with the railroad was first established by a man named G. T. Blythe (no relation to the town off Blythe, California) who arrived there in 1930 with his wife and two daughters, Dorothy and Mary L.  Mr. Blythe noticed there were vast stretches of roads through the desert without facilities for motorists – it was 100 miles between Needles and Ludlow, California, and another fifty miles to Barstow so he decided to open a small garage and gasoline service station at Essex, at the intersection of Route 66 and the road going north to Mitchell Caverns.  At this time, Route 66 was just a dirt road adjacent to the railroad tracks.

The original dirt road through Essex that paralleled the railroad and continued to Fenner and Goffs was designated National Old Trails Road by the National Old Trails Road Association in 1913. In 1926, the road was renamed U.S. Highway 66, but it took several years to pave the new highway across the desert and it was paved by the county from west to east; from Barstow to Needles. When the road crews reach Essex in about 1931 the highway engineers realized they could shorten the remaining road length from Essex to Needles by eight miles by constructing a route directly east from Essex to the pass at Mountain Springs rather than following the gradual grade paralleling the railroad through Fenner and Goffs. Thus, was born the Mountain Springs cutoff.

With the bypass to Mountain Springs completed it then became Route 66 and the road through Fenner and Goffs was renamed Goffs Road.   The newly paved highway was positioned about an eighth of a mile north of the tracks, where the paved road is today, so Blythe was obliged to relocate his service station up to the new highway so it would be accessible to motorists.

As traffic on Route 66 continued to increase in the 1930s and especially in the late 1940s after WWII, more and more businesses began to be established in Essex.   At its peak Essex had 4 gas stations, two garages, two markets, a motel (The Wayside Inn), a post office, and two cafés but not all of them were operating at any one time.  There was never a church or cemetery in Essex.  A grave for a mother and two children purported to be east of the town in the early 1930s has now been completely erased by time.

In 1929 a school was opened in Essex through the efforts of Mr. Blythe and Mr. G W. Simpson, an Essex resident.  Classes were initially held in a converted boxcar and the first teacher to be employed there was Miss Ida Collins.   The school eventually was moved to a house that was donated to the school district, but a new school was built in the 1930s to accommodate from 20 to 30 students in multiple grades in two separate classrooms.  In 1940 Essex received a newly purchased school bus that featured “all-steel body, shatter-proof glass, hydraulic brakes, insulated gas tank, and a rear door exit.”   Exa (Derm) Neilson, wife of Johnny Neilson from Danby and Mrs. Howard taught classes in Essex for most of the time the school was open, and Mr. Rayburn Werts was the sole teacher in later years just before the school closed in 1967.  Although Mr. Werts was the only teacher at the time, the school principal, Mr. Tony Johnson, was in Needles.

The Essex school closed in 2002 because of the declining population in and around Essex and thereafter children had to travel 40 miles to Needles to attend school.  When the railroad ceased to require employees to be stationed at Essex the house formerly used by the railroad superintendent was donated to the school and was moved to the school grounds and used as a teacher’s residence.

The photo of the left is the original Essex school. It was first the residence of the railroad superintendent ,and was donated to the school district when the Essex depot was closed. When the new school was built (shown on the photo on the right), the original school building was used as a teacher's residence.

Essex reached its peak population in the 1960s and 1970s. The permanent population of Essex probably never exceeded about 35 people, and at one time there were 4 families there named Smith:

Mary Blythe, daughter of Mr. Blythe who established the town, married Walt Smith and for a time in the 1960s they ran the Mobil service station adjacent to the post office.
Doug and Patsy Smith also lived in Essex and ran John Bentley’s Shell service station.
Jerry Smith (Doug’s brother), a truck driver, retired to Essex with his wife Virginia who worked in the school cafeteria and as a teacher’s aide.
Erv Smith and his wife Helen and their three daughters lived for a time about nine miles south of Essex near Weaver’s Well and later moved to Essex and ran the Wayside Inn.

The post office in Essex and the adjacent former market are unique having been built by Mr. Blythe with a façade using rock gathered locally from the surrounding desert. Although there were a number of Essex residents and school children who worked in the post office as helpers, there were only three postmasters during its existence – Eva (Parker) Craig, Eunice (Craig), and Jack Howard before the post office was permanently closed.

Two photos of the post office in Essex (now closed) that was originally built by Mr. Blythe and constructed with a facade of local rock.

Motorists driving across through the Mojave Desert in the 1940s, 50s and 60s did not have air-conditioned vehicles and consequently they traveled mostly at night to avoid the heat. Still, overheating was a major problem for both passengers and the cars. A former Highway Patrol officer commented that most mornings found a hundred or more cars alongside the highway through the desert, stranded because of overheating. In the 1930s the highway maintenance crew put in a small water well on the west end of Essex to provide free water to travelers to fill their radiators without them having to ask for water and be pressured into buying gasoline or oil at a service station in town. The well is still there today on the south side of the highway west of town - a small circular well with stone walls and a wood-shingled roof although it is no longer operating.

Water well at the west side of Essex installed by the California highway maintenance crew for the benefit of travelers needing water for their cars. The well is no longer in service.

The “Carlos House” one of the few houses in Essex on the north side of the road, was built in the late 1920s to house the maintenance men who worked on the telephone line. The telephone line was just north of Essex and was installed in 1929 and connected the East coast with the west coast – the first intercontinental phone line. The land was owned by the Craig family in Essex, and when it was no longer used for the maintenance personnel, Eunice Craig turned the building it into a restaurant. All evidence of the telephone lines is now gone; the poles have been removed. The Carlos family used the house as a home and ran a cafe for a while, but the years they were there are uncertain. The house was also used as a beauty salon for a short time. Sadly the years have taken their toll, and the house is now in danger of collapse.

The "Carlos House" in Essex in 2004 (left) and 2018 (right).

Wayside Inn
The Wayside Inn, on the west end of Essex, was built in the early 1930s and consisted of a cafe, grocery store, a garage, a gas station and 14 motel cabins. It was the only motel ever operating in Essex. In the early years it was run by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Miller, but whether they were the first owners is uncertain. The motel caught fire in the mid-1940s when the Millers were running it, and the property was then purchased by Mr. & Mrs. Burl Chambers who rebuilt it and ran it from about 1946 until about 1950.

In later years the Wayside Inn had several different owners/operators including Fred Boyer and Uell Woods of Phoenix, Arizona who leased the motel from Burl Chambers in 1950, Ervin Smith ran it for a while, and in the early 1960s it was run by a family named Finzell [sp?]. Records of who owned it and when are confusing, and it seems that eventually the café and grocery store closed and only the service station, garage and motel were in operation. In 1948 Burl Chambers leased the business to Fred Boyer and Uell Woods from Phoenix, but it is doubtful if the men ever followed through with the lease because Burl still owned the property in 1950. A fire destroyed the Wayside Inn again in 1958 and was probably the end of the business; there is no indication that it was ever rebuilt. A couple of the small wooden cabins are still standing amidst the concrete foundations where other cabins once stood, but aside from that and some rusting clothesline poles little else remains.

Some early photos of the Wayside Inn (top), and the remains of one of the motel rooms that still remains.

Until the 1950s the houses and businesses in Essex were dependent on delivery of water by the Santa Fe railroad that drew the water from their facilities at Fenner, fifteen miles northeast of Essex. However, Eunice (Craig) who owned property in Essex and Burl Chambers who ran the Wayside Inn, each drilled wells on their respective properties in about 1954 and the town no longer had to depend on water deliveries from the railroad. Drilling of the water wells was inspired by the fact that 1954 was also the year that Essex was connected to the rural electric grid and no longer had to rely on generators for electricity. This was also the year they got flush toilets! It seems that 1954 was a banner year for Essex!

Motorists driving into Essex today are greeted by a green highway sign that reads “Essex pop. 100, elev. 1775”. Although the elevation is correct, there are only 3 permanent residents; the basis for the population figure on the road sign was decided upon by the highway department by the number of boxes in the post office.

Once Interstate-40 was completed in the early 1970s, Essex was bypassed and the population quickly dwindled. Now all of the businesses in Essex have closed and many of the buildings are unoccupied and succumbing to the elements – although a few residents remain, these days the only signs of life in Essex are mainly just the occasional railroad workers and highway maintenance crews.

Note: With the exception of the Highway Department maintenance yard almost the entire property encompassing Essex is privately owned and visitors should seek permission before venturing off of the highway.

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"Hank's Place", East Essex, California

Essex, California

Essex highway sign

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