Travels on the Mother Road, Route 66 - Part 2, Central California

We continue our tour on the Mother Road, Route 66. Once you leave the Los Angeles valley and rise out of Cayon Pass on Interstate 15, you are in the Mojave Desert. The towns along I-15 still have the ubiquitous California urban sprawl, but there is undeveloped desert between them.

Route 66 is also known as the National Trails Highway in central California. About 15 miles from Cajon Pass, the National Trails Highway diverges north away from I-15 at Victorville. Drive north a few miles and you reach Oro Grande. There is not much to downtown Oro Grande other than an old-fashioned business block, but it contained an active restaurant and a couple of gift shops.

Salvaged & Tattered, at 19248 National Trails Highway, was open. Songs by Edith Piaf emerged from the door - what, Piaf in the desert of California? Interesting place; the charming proprietor graciously let me take a photograph in her store. She said many Europeans stopped at the store, and a surprising number did the trip both directions. They rented a car in Chicago, drove to Santa Monica, and then turned around and drove back on 66. She said she had also met Europeans who bought a high-horsepower American muscle car, did the 66 trip both directions, and then shipped their car home as a used car. Some people do interesting things....

Just north of Oro Grande, I passed a field with some old cars. By chance, a fellow was at the gate waiting for someone to let him in. The lady who came to the gate said I was welcome to photograph this handsome Hudson Statesman Custom. Her uncle or dad(?) was restoring it - one day. They really made massive cars in the 1940s.

A few miles further northeast, near Lenwood, I came across the abandoned Dunes Motel, at 23135 Main Street. The palms really needed pruning. Many odd birds lived in the foliage. I watched for snakes because I was wearing sandals.

I doubt anyone will ever use the Dunes again. Possibly it had been modified to serve as apartment units.

The National Trails Highway turns east, running north of I-15. We enter Barstow, which was a major mining and transportation center starting in the 1800s. It was on the Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe as well as the Mormon Road from Salt Lake City. Barstow became a major rail center for the Santa Fe railroad as well as a stopover for Route 66 travelers.

And who could resist stopping at the famous ElRancho Motel? The signs tell you how far it is to various popular cities, including Cairo and Jerusalem (Route 66 goes that far?). A tenant who spoke to me emphasized that Marilyn Monroe stayed there.

Downtown Barstow is rather uninspiring, despite many attempts to link contemporary stores with Route 66.

The Route 66 Mother Road Museum is located in the historic Barstow Harvey House hotel. The hotel has been restored and is used for formal events and graduations. The National Park Service has a description of the Harvey House and other sites along Route 66. Amtrak's Southwest Chief train stops here. My daughter took the Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles many years ago but may have slept through Barstow.

The Western America Railroad Museum is next to the depot. Unfortunately, you can't go into the locomotives, but there is still plenty to see.

We will continue our Mother Road expedition in future updates. Please stay tuned and thanks for reading. These photographs are from a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with the in-camera monochrome setting. I used a polarizing filter on many exposures to emphasize the dark sky.

Travels on the Mother Road, Route 66 - Part I, Los Angeles Area

Background

Dear Readers, this is the first of a series of articles on Route 66, also known as the Mother Road. This was not the first paved road across America, but when it officially opened on November 11, 1926, it consolidated numerous existing highways into one identifiable path extending from Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles (and later, Santa Monica), California. During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, mobile and post-war-wealthy families, dreamers, and wanderers explored the route, supporting thousands of restaurants, motels, gas stations, and roadside attractions through eight states and 2,400 miles of "Main Street of America." Most guidebooks start the journey in Chicago and describe the trip heading westward. But I drove Route 66 eastward from Los Angeles as far as Albuquerque, so I will organize these posts in a series of stages moving from west to east.

Recommended reading:  Route 66 Adventure Handbook by Drew Knowles (Santa Monica Press).
GPS waypoints: GPS waypoint files are available at Route66maps.com. You can load them into your Garmin device and it will display a heart-shaped icon when you approach a historical Route 66 feature.
Legends of America has a lot of good online information and a state-by-state guide.

Ron Maskell, an Australian, did an amazing bicycle ride on most of Route 66 in 2012. His blog is a readable resource with excellent photography, and he has interesting observations about Americans from from a non-US viewpoint. Some quotes from his summary page were sobering:

Route 66 does not run through the pretty parts of America. 

The roads between the towns often went through areas of severe rural poverty, lonely country, desolate country and towns that were either deprived, were looking extinction in the face or have died already.

Of the survivors, the older neighbourhoods were run-down and neglected, some almost derelict. Along the interstates, which are the scrub ticks draining the life from these towns, motel, Wal-Mart and service station development seems poorly planned and opportunistic. My impression was that the lack of government or official support is killing off Route 66. Many businesses are either struggling or closed down. 

A 2009 article in Smithsonian (March 2009, Volume 39, No. 12) titled 10 Must-See Endangered Cultural Treasures, included Route 66 as one of these treasures.

The Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, administered by the National Park Service, is attempting to restore and preserve many of the cultural artifacts. "It's a tremendous cross section of American history along those 2,400 miles," says Barthuli (program administrator). "If we lose those stories, we're really losing a sense of ourselves."

Los Angeles Area, California

Route 66 once extended into downtown Los Angeles via Figueroa Street and, in later years, continued to Santa Monica via Santa Monica Boulevard or Sunset. But the metropolitan sprawl of modern Los Angeles has gobbled up most (all?) traces of the old Route 66. There are plenty of dumpy buildings in Los Angeles that may date to the Route 66 era, but a visitor would be hard pressed to make much of a connection. I recommend you skip trying to find remnants of 66 in downtown Los Angeles and proceed east.

But moving east is equally frustrating because Pasadena, Arcadia, Monrovia, San Dimas, and Glendora have also suffered from extreme urban sprawl. 66 is essentially gone. But starting in Glendora, the map shows Route 66 proceeding along historic Foothill Boulevard. Well, the first few miles are solid modern strip with malls, gas stations, and condominium complexes. The waypoints on my Garmin GPS showed features along the way, but all were gone, overrun by modern malls and concrete.

Finally, as your enter Rancho Cucamonga, a handsome bridge announces that you are on Route 66. Well that is hopeful. And to the left (north), the historic Sycamore Inn still serves fine food. But the urban sprawl continues and there is little 66 memorabilia to see for the next few miles until you reach Rancho Cucamonda.

Continue along Foothill Blvd. It is pretty dull, but when it rains, the water gushes along the pavement. It reminds me of Houston.

Finally, something interesting, the Wigwam Motel. Each concrete teepee is an individual motel unit, and all looked immaculately clean.

A friendly Indian lady (from India, not native American) graciously let me take photographs. She said she and her family had run the motel for 13 years.

There were some period Route 66 vehicles on the property, a theme that I was to see all along the route.

San Bernardino is reputed to be a pretty rough town, but compared to many places I have visited, it is not too bad. Route 66 bypasses downtown and turns north on Mt. Vernon Avenue.

There is a large Hispanic community in San Bernardino with numerous churches to serve them.

The former Lido Motel at 2140 Cajon Blvd. is now rented as apartments. They looked reasonably clean and a couple of residents help me find the original Route 66. Notice the square boxes on the roofs. These are swamp coolers, which are evaporative coolers, where the cooling occurs via the evaporation of water.

Ascending the narrow Cajon Pass is difficult because parts of 66 have been overridden by the modern Interstate 15 (I-15). But once over the pass, we are in the desert and we can continue to look for Route 66 remains (to be continued).

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera. I set it on black and white mode to fit the 1950s ambience of my expedition. I reprocessed some RAW files with PhotoNinja software. (Note, click any photograph to expand it to 1600 pixels wide.)

Salton City, CA: The Party Where No One Came

The Salton sea is a endorheic rift lake located in southern California in Imperial and Riverside counties. It is shallow, saline, and fed by agricultural runoff. A few wadis (gullies) lead into the lake, but only flow after a rainstorm. The Sea was trendy and sophisticated in the 1940s, when Hollywood stars flocked to marinas and watched boat races. In recent decades, increasing salinity led to fish kills and severe environmental degradation, and the tourists stopped coming. Dust has led to serious air quality issues.

Salton City was an ambitious dream. When you look at aerial photographs, you see a grid of streets and think this must be a sizable community. But in fact, few of the streets were ever developed, and tumbleweeds blow over dusty pavement. According to Wikipedia, "The town was developed in the 1950s and established in 1958 primarily by M. Penn Phillips and the Holly Sugar Corporation as a resort community on the Salton Sea." But it was isolated and there were few local employment opportunities, leading to minimal development. Could the fact that the summer temperature was over 100 deg F be part of the story? (Of course, Palm Springs is hot, too, but it is higher altitude and close to mountains, and has a more sophisticated aura to it.).

The main excitement seems to happen at the Arco truck stop on California State Highway 86 at the junction with Marina Drive. Optimism: the sign says there are lots for sale. (Click any photograph to enlarge it.)

Cross Highway 86 and head east on Marina Drive, and the Alamo Restaurant welcomes you. Another good sign.

Oh oh, now it look a bit quieter. Where are the people?

The high school looks modern and clean, but it sits by itself in a rather lonely spot.

We found one lot with some habitation.

A sign said "Marina." Where was it? All we saw was sand. Even the palm trees looked lonely.

Another chance to buy some waterfront property.

This road was rip-rapped (protected with stone). Did it once serve as a levee during a time of higher water level? Bombay Beach, on the east side of the lake, also had levees.

Oh oh, some more of these unhappy palm trees.

This basin may have been the unhappy marina. The yachtsmen must have moved their boats away.

This says it all for poor old Salton City. But not all is lost; drive about an hour northwest to Palm Springs, and you can dine in a variety of excellent restaurants. Salton city is only 30 min, south of Interstate 10, so the next time you drive across country, take a short diversion and see the Salton Sea. Click the link for some photographs of Bombay Beach.

The day my daughter and I visited Salton City, storms had recently passed, so the sky had more texture than usual with high clouds. I used a Fuji X-E1 camera with a polarizing filter to darken the sky. I processed the Fuji raw files with PhotoNinja software and converted to monochrome with their red or orange filter emulations. On some frames, I slid the blue wavelengths slider to the left to create an almost black sky. Also, I cropped square as per the days when I used a Rolleiflex camera, with its 6×6 frame. On my next trip there, I will take my 4×5" camera and do real photography with Tri-X film.

Bombay Beach - Crumbling in Monochrome at the Salton Sea

Dear Readers, one of my readers suggested that the cross-processed photographs of Bombay Beach in my previous article looked a bit odd and that the Bombay really should be black and white. So let us try again. I did not have a real (film) camera with me, but I reprocessed many of the RAW files with DxO Filmpack 3 to simulate Kodak's famous Tri-X film.

Bombay Beach is a former resort/trailer court on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, in Imperial county, California. To reach it, drive on California Highway 111 along the barren desert east of the Sea, and turn west on Avenue A.  

Well, it does not look too bad. There is a store and mailboxes. Human habitation, perhaps?

Oops, the view from Avenue A becomes a bit grim. To the north, beyond the one bush, is a dry and featureless plain.

To the south, well, it was trailer heaven once upon a time.

The gate leads to a sizable deserted parking lot at the plage. They were optimistic.

Continue to the end of Avenue A, and the levee protects the town from flooding. Drive up onto the levee, and the land beyond is a mess of twisted trailer and collapsed sheds. It looks like the debris I saw along the Mississippi coast after Hurricane Katrina, but the Salton Sea does not have hurricanes.  Very odd.

In the water, the pilings are encrusted with salt, and the beach sediment consists of fish bone rubble. 

At least someone had fun with this old chimney.

Back in town, Fifth Street was the waterfront (levee-front?) corniche. Maybe the graffiti is more interesting.

Turn back inland along Avenue G. Someone collected classic Volkswagen Beetles. Rather cool. Someone else collected classic tires. Less cool. 

The well-known western author, Harold Bell Wright, wrote a novel about the formation of the present Salton Sea, The Winning of Barbara Worth. My daughter borrowed it from her local library. Her opinion was that it is one of those novels that does not age well. It lacks the pace or writing style that modern readers find interesting, but it does give an interesting window into the attitudes of the day. The primary assumption of the characters in the book is that by "reclaiming" the desert and making it fertile and lush, they are somehow doing a great work for the world or for God. The desert was something that was "broken" and had to be fixed. It is rather shocking to think that this was the attitude that caused us to make huge alterations to the West, and that a mere 100 years can shift attitudes so drastically.

Also, Barbara inspires all the desert reclamation workers by her "pure essence of womanhood." Well, times have changed...

Harold Bell Wright wrote The Winning of Barbara Worth while living in the tower at the Holt House, on Olive Avenue in Redlands, California. He modeled the protagonist on his host, Mr. Holt. Wright was a pastor, and possibly when the church could no longer afford his services, Mr. Holt provided him a place to stay.

My daughter drove me to Bombay Beach, as she knows my photographic interests. The ground-level photographs were taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera, with RAW files processed with Adobe Camera Raw and DxO Filmpack 3.