Author Susan A. Palmer tells on her blog about her recent visit to Amboy, Calif., on Route 66.
Her post needs clarifications, however. Albert Okura, owner of Juan Pollo restaurants (the food is delicious, by the way), bought the whole town of Amboy and its flagship business, Roy’s, earlier this year. He is slowly restoring Amboy and Roy’s after it suffered from years of neglect and from owners indifferent or downright hostile to Route 66 tourists. Okura bought the town not because he thought he’d make a pile of money on it. He bought because it’s a piece of Route 66 history virtually unchanged from the 1950s, and he wanted to preserve it.
As far as I’m concerned, Okura is a hero.
For more about the Amboy purchase and Okura’s plans, read this article. An excellent history of Amboy can be found here.
Great post and I really appreciated the links you provided. Being a native born Californian now living in the Carolina’s it is great to see some virtual information about my home state and this post had the added bonus of being something I never experienced when I lived in CA. I had been through 29 Palms in my wanderings around and it would have been awesome to visit Amboy!
Dewayne Mikkelson
Thanks, Shadow. I’m going to try to keep abreast on the ongoing restoration efforts of Roy’s and Amboy. It’ll probably take a while, but from what I’ve heard about Okura’s past efforts, I’m sure it’ll be a first-class job.