One of my favorite books about this route, Ghost Towns of Route 66 by Jim Hinckley, calls Amboy one of the roads’ most famous ghost towns. And Roy’s Motel and Café is key to that fame. Hinkley writes:

The sign and its namesake café and gas station have figured prominently in commercials promoting everything from Dodge trucks to Qwest.

It was both the bypassing of Route 66 and Amboy being bulldozed to avoid taxes that turned it into a ghost town. Since I visited, parts of Roy’s have been restored but when I was there, it was a ghost motel in a ghost town.

Establishing Photograph