Roy's - Amboy, CA
Posted by: 
uccacher
N 34° 33.517 W 115° 44.600
11S E 615288 N 3824814
Roy's is a great place to stop for gas and a cold drink while traveling along historic Route 66
Waymark Code: WMCD1H
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 08/23/2011
Views: 22
In 1938, founder Roy Crowl opened Roy's as a gas and service station along the legendary U.S. Highway 66, in Amboy. At the time, Route 66 was "The Mother Road" and "Main Street of America" - the primary east-west highway artery crossing the nation from Chicago through the Southwest to Los Angeles. The construction of Roy's coincided with a Route 66 realignment through Mountain Springs Summit, bypassing Goffs to directly connect Needles and Essex, and west to Amboy.
In the 1940s, Crowl teamed up with his son-in-law, Herman "Buster" Burris. They expanded the business, as Roy's Motel and Cafe, to include a cafe, an auto repair garage, and an auto court of small cabins for overnight rental by Route 66 travelers. Buster Burris himself almost singlehandedly created the town's infrastructure, some of which remains semi-functioning today. Burris even brought power to Amboy and Roy's all the way from Barstow by erecting his own poles and wires alongside Route 66 using an old Studebaker pickup truck.
Postwar business boomed as families discovered the joys of motor travel after the World War II years of tire and gasoline rationing and new cars not being manufactured. Roy Crowl and Burris kept Roy's garage and cafe operating 24 hours a day - seven days a week; so busy was Roy's that Burris took out classified ads in newspapers across the country in the hope of recruiting help.[1]
By the opening of the 1950s, Roy's complex employed up to 70 people; the town's entire population then was 700.
Some very significant and lasting aesthetic changes came to Roy's Motel and Cafe in 1959: with the February 1 erection of the infamous towering neon "Roy's boomerang logo" sign visible for miles approaching Amboy; and with the construction of the motel's new Mid-Century Modern Style - MCM "inclined roof flying over a glassed wedge" guest reception and office "theme building." They all were a vital beacon milepost and "modernist refuge" for the following decade plus.
Source: Wikipedia (
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