A Route 66-themed gas station and convenience store is expected to break ground in March along National Trails Highway (aka Route 66) in Helendale, California.
The Desert Dispatch in nearby Victorville had the scoop:
Thomas Steeno, owner of Steeno Design Studio Inc., told the Daily Press on Friday construction plans will be sent to San Bernardino County for approval next week.
Steeno’s Hesperia-based firm has been at work on the project since 2017. […]
The store will be on nearly two acres of vacant land on the southwest corner of the highway and Vista Road, according to Terri Rahhal, planning director in the county’s Land Use Services Department.
“It features Route 66 as a theme,” Rahhal said during a county Board of Supervisors meeting in December. “It’s really going to pop at this location.”
The design isn’t all that distinctive to Route 66. But there’s not a lot of development at that site, so it’s probably welcome for that reason alone. The intersection is about 20 miles from Barstow and 18 miles from Victorville. And any sort of nod to Route 66 is a good thing.
The closest attraction is Elmer Long’s Bottletree Ranch, about three miles south of there. The village of Oro Grande is about 10 miles south of the intersection.
For many years, Helendale’s biggest claim to fame was Dixie Evans and her Exotic World Burlesque Museum & Striptease Hall of Fame. Exotic World eventually moved to Las Vegas in 2006. Evans, a former Marilyn Monroe lookalike, died in 2013 at age 86.
(Artist’s rendering of the Route 66-themed convenience store planned for Helendale, California, via San Bernardino County and Steeno Design Studio)