County Fire Battalion Chief Donnie Viloria said workers who had just finished their shift in Cadiz noticed the fire at the Roadrunner's Retreat, but because they didn’t have cell reception, they had to go somewhere else to report the blaze. Viloria said the Roadrunner Retreat is in such a remote area on Route 66 that the fire had been burning for hours before anyone noticed and it took the firefighters more than an hour to reach the fire. He added that while the diner building is still standing, all the contents inside were destroyed. The adjacent Roadrunner gas station was not affected by the fire. The cause of the fire is suspicious in nature.
On July 30, 2020 the iconic Roadrunner's Retreat on old Route 66 near Chambless, California was burned in a fire.
County Fire Battalion Chief Donnie Viloria said workers who had just finished their shift in Cadiz noticed the fire at the Roadrunner's Retreat, but because they didn’t have cell reception, they had to go somewhere else to report the blaze. Viloria said the Roadrunner Retreat is in such a remote area on Route 66 that the fire had been burning for hours before anyone noticed and it took the firefighters more than an hour to reach the fire. He added that while the diner building is still standing, all the contents inside were destroyed. The adjacent Roadrunner gas station was not affected by the fire. The cause of the fire is suspicious in nature. On July 30, 2020 the Roadrunner' Retreat, an iconic former cafe on old Route 66 near Chambless, California was burned in a fire. County Fire Battalion Chief Donnie Viloria said workers who had just finished their shift in Cadiz noticed the fire at the Roadrunner's Retreat, but because they didn’t have cell phone reception, they had to go somewhere else to report the fire. Viloria said the Roadrunner's Retreat is in such a remote area on old Route 66 that the fire had been burning for hours before anyone noticed and it took firefighters more than an hour to reach the fire. He added that while the diner building is still standing, all the contents inside were destroyed. The adjacent Roadrunner gas station was not affected by the fire. The owner of the Roadrunner Retreat was notified of the fire by fans of a Route 66 social media page. The cause of the fire is suspicious in nature. 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. 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. |
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