Amboy, California

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Amboy, California is a nearly empty ghost town in California's Mojave Desert roughly sixty miles (97 km) northeast of Twentynine Palms. It was once a major stop along famous Route 66 but has seen much lower visitation since the opening of Interstate 40 to the north in 1973. Amboy is famous as a genuine Route 66 landmark as well.

Roy's Motel and Cafe was and is the only gasoline, food and lodging stop for miles around that part of the eastern Mojave and was well known for both its Googie "retro-future" architecture added to one of the original buildings and even more famous sign, a 1959 addition. Both Roy's and the surrounding town were once owned by Buster Burris, one of Route 66's most famous characters who purchased Roy's from his father-in-law Roy Crowl, the man for whom the property is named, in 1938 and ran the town until 1995. Burris was also responsible for erecting power poles between Amboy and Barstow, using a crane mounted on a 1930s-vintage Studebaker truck.

Buster sold the town in 2000, just before he died at the age of 92. The town was owned by investors Walt Wilson and Tim White starting from 2000. After the two investors lost it in foreclosure, it was repossessed by Bessie Burris, Buster's widow. Bessie sold the property again in 2005 to Albert Okura, owner of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain, who offered $425,000 in cash and promised to preserve the town and reopen Roy's

Amboy is also one of California's oldest towns, dating from 1858 and even has an unused, unrestored one-room schoolhouse dating from the 1900s. Its growth over the years was tied to chloride works in the dry lake beds that dot the area as well as the Santa Fe Railroad over which high-speed freight trains still run between Kingman, Arizona and the BNSF Railway giant Barstow yard. The chloride works rank among the world's largest.

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