This ghost town in the middle of the Mojave Desert has more famous signs than it does people – but it’s owner is scrambling to do everything he can to bring the area back to its former glory.
Kyle Okura, 31, inherited all the businesses and assets inside Amboy, California – which has an official population of zero – from his late father last year, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The town is right along the famous Route 66, and tourists love to take pictures with the iconic Route 66 emblem that’s painted into the paved road.
Additionally, a 50-foot neon sign for Roy’s Motel & Café, the only operational business in Amboy, has become the centerpiece for the town’s revitalization efforts.
‘It’s in the middle of nowhere in the desert, but you see a multitude of different types of people in Amboy,’ said Okura, who owns Roy’s. ‘That’s what’s so amazing. You hear stories from all different parts of the world.’
Roy’s was originally opened by Roy Crowl to serve as a rest stop for motorists traveling on what used to be the primary east-west highway in the US, Route 66
This area has long been a stop for travelers, starting when it was established in 1858 as a mining camp. The grounds gradually grew into an actual town with a Atlantic and Pacific Railroad station that was named Amboy.
Nowadays, Amboy is dotted with empty houses and buildings, a shuttered post office, a church with no congregants and a school with no students.
The last remaining sign of life in the town is Roy’s, which has cold drinks, snacks and souvenirs. Outside the storefront sit three mechanical pumps that require an attendant to dispense the gasoline, priced at $6.49 a gallon for regular in recent times.
But Roy’s is much more than a gas station for some.
For Jan Kuzelka, a travel guide who’s been leading tourists from the Czech Republic and Slovakia on trips to national parks for 12 years, Roy’s is an attraction that’s as significant as other great staples of American culture like the Grand Canyon.
Assistant Manager Nicole Rachel unlocks the small historic church for tourists
Pictured: Amboy’s old school, now boarded up and abandoned
‘You sink into the ’60s here,’ Kuzelka, 49, told the LA Times. ‘It’s like a live museum.’
Assistant manager Nicole Rachel, 48, said that Roy’s seems to be most popular with Germans, though customers from Brazil, Belgium, Canada, France and many other countries visit the doo-wop blaring establishment on a regular basis.
‘They are very much into the Americana — the Route 66, the old diners,’ Rachel said.
‘They come through and they look and are like, “What are those?” And I’m like, “They’re hot dogs.”‘
Okura relit the famous Roy’s neon sign back in November 2019, an event that attracted 500 people and at least 50 airplanes that flew to Amboy’s airstrip.
‘I remember when my father purchased Amboy, everyone wrote it off as a bad decision. Fourteen years of struggling to restore the once famous boomtown and we’ve finally started to turn this thing around,’ Okura wrote in an Instagram post.
Amboy indeed was a lively community once. After Route 66 was paved in the 1920s, it was home to a couple hundred residents.
A dog wanders a deserted parking lot near Roy’s gas station on May 24, 2024
Okura takes a selfie with girlfriend Crysta Bree out in front of Roy’s as the sun sets
Roy Crowl opened Roy’s to serve motorists traveling on what used to be the primary east-west highway in the US. Together with his son-in-law Buster Burris, they expanded the roadside convenience store to include a cafe, then a motel.
But as time went on, Route 66 wasn’t the end all be all as federal highways expanded and grew.
In 1972, Interstate 40 was built about 10 miles north and ended up routing nearly all traffic away from Amboy, basically killing the entire town and Roy’s along with it.
Okura’s father Albert, nicknamed ‘The Chicken Man’ for founding the Juan Pollo restaurant chain, saw the potential in the abandoned ghost town nearly 20 years ago and bought it from Burris’ widow for $425,000.
One of the conditions of the sale was to restore the town to what it once was.
Okura’s father started by reopening the gas station of Roy’s and doing upkeep on the 1950’s style lobby.
French tourists take a group selfie on National Trails Highway (Route 66) in front of the Roy’s sign on May 24, 2024
Assistant manager Nicole Rachel works behind the counter at Roy’s as tourists stop in for snacks on May 24, 2024
Okura was 12 when his dad bought Amboy, which is sandwiched between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and recalled being confused about why he decided to do it.
‘All I could think was, “Man, this place is so far away. Where are we even going?”‘
This wasn’t entirely out of character for his dad though, who by this point had already bought the San Bernardino storefront on Route 66 – formerly the site of the original McDonald’s and opened a museum dedicated to the burger restaurant there.
He thought Amboy would attract publicity for the Juan Pollo chain but Okura remembered not being convinced.
Okura gradually took on a more active role in getting Amboy up and running. It was a way for him to get close to his father, who had worked every single day for some 40 years, breezing through holidays, his birthdays and his children’s birthdays.
And just like with his chicken restaurant, Okura’s father was hard-working at Amboy, often the first to arrive and the last to leave, his employees recalled.
Albert “the Chicken Man” Okura, founder of the Juan Pollo restaurant chains, pictured with Kyle in 1994
Okura’s father got to see the relighting of the Roy’s neon sign in 2019, a huge milestone for father and son, but last year, he came down with what he thought was a stomach bug.
By the time he got to a hospital, the family found out he contracted sepsis. He died four days later at 71, the LA Times reported.
‘I thought I was going to be working with him forever,’ Okura said, noting that Albert had regularly brought his own dad to work until just a month before his 100th birthday. ‘I thought we would be the same, we’d be working together until he was 100.’
Okura said he’s in talks to have a portion of the National Trails Highway, the official name for Route 66, be renamed Albert Okura Memorial Highway in his father’s honor. As part of that, Okura plans to eventually hang plaques around Amboy that detail the history of his father’s quest to save the once dynamic town.
Currently, Okura is juggling both Amboy’s revitalization and Juan Pollo, as he became the president of the chicken restaurant chain after his father’s death.
Emily and Joe Coombs of Montana get an exclusive look inside the small historic church across the street from Roy’s
Luckily, he has a small but dedicated group that wants to put Amboy back on the map, starting with reopening the motel and café at Roy’s that once hosted guests for longer than just a quick stop for gas or a snack.
Okura’s dream team includes Rachel and Roy’s manager Ken Large, a history buff who runs the day-to-day operations.
Large is also an avid stamp collector hopes to someday reopen the Amboy Post Office.
Rachel, who formerly worked in child care, handles the town’s social media accounts, advertising and filming logistics.
Amboy is also a place with a long tradition of hosting film and commercial shoots.
The windswept desert town has been the site of filming for many slasher flicks, with Rachel lamenting that there haven’t been ‘any romantic comedies’ shot there yet.
Roy’s did however appear on the cover Louis Vuitton’s Route 66 Travel Book several years ago.
Okura poses in front of the classic Roy’s sign sitting on the hood of Lincoln Continental
Even more recently, Olivia Rodrigo filmed a portion of her music documentary ‘Driving Home 2 U’ in Amboy. A year later in 2023, David Yarrow did a photo shoot with supermodel Cindy Crawford, who sat in a $7-million 1953 Ferrari Spider with Roy’s in the background.
‘One of the best memories I have is being out here at sunset with Cindy Crawford,’ Large said. ‘I’m old. That might be as good as it gets for me.’
Okura has occupied himself with the grunt work necessary to get Amboy in working order, with step one being replacing the septic system.
Once that’s done, Roy’s can once again have public restrooms and ditch the portable toilets that are less than fun to do your business in in 120 degree heat.
Arguably the biggest challenge for Okura has been getting drinkable water run back into Roy’s, which is critical in order to reopen the café.
The property’s well water is apparently 10 times as salty as the ocean, largely due to the nearby salt mines, which necessitates a reverse osmosis filtration system to be constantly running. Okura is considering hauling water to the town instead.
Old Route 66 is pictured with Roy’s in the background on the left hand side of the historic road
Okura’s goal is to have much of this work done by the 100th anniversary of Route 66 in 2026, which tourism officials hope will be the boon needed to jumpstart businesses along the historic artery.
Two decades ago, when he was still barely a teenager, Okura saw Amboy as nothing but a sandy relic of a bygone era. Now he views it as a place worth saving, just like his dad did.
‘It’s unlike any other place you can visit,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing like it and no way you can replicate something like Amboy.’
Okura said ‘destiny’ was his father’s favorite word, which has spurred him to name his future daughter that, should he have one.
‘When Amboy came along, he kept telling himself, “It is my destiny,”‘ Okura said about his late father. ‘So I do believe that now, moving forward, it’s part of my destiny to honor that.’
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