Barstow wants visitors to get their kicks at Route 66 museum

Chelsea J. Carter

Monday, July 3, 2000 | 11:32 a.m.

BARSTOW, Calif. -- Gloria Darling ran her hand across black and white pictures, reliving childhood memories of her travels on Route 66.

One of her family's stops on their annual summer trek from Oklahoma to California was a gas station in this desert outpost that had a Pepsi icebox where she could stick her hand in to get a cold chocolate drink.

Later, as a teenager living in Barstow, there was the night she and her friends cruised 100 miles up and down the same three-quarter-mile stretch of Route 66, known locally as Main Street.

"They aren't exciting stories, I know. But they are my stories," Darling said recently.

It is these simple recollections that councilwoman Darling and other city officials want visitors to their new Route 66 museum to take away with them.

"Route 66 was sort of a living thing, full of people going from one place to another," said Patricia Moser, assistant to the city manager.

The Mother Road Museum, opening Tuesday, is the latest in a string of efforts by cities and towns to honor the highway dubbed "the mother road" in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath."

When Route 66 was built through Barstow in the 1920s, the town became a stopping-off point along the 2,448-mile route between Chicago and Los Angeles.

Unlike other communities that all but collapsed when Route 66 was replaced by the modern Interstate highway system, Barstow thrived, in large part because of its additional role as a railroad hub.

Today, the city of about 23,000 is the last large outpost for tourists and truckers headed east across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas and Arizona on Interstates 15 and 40.

But it has struggled with its image, often the butt of jokes because of its isolated location.

"When people get stuck in Barstow, it's usually because their car broke down or they just stop to get gas and something to eat," said Mayor Katy Ysalas-Yent. "That's their only memory of Barstow and, let's face it, that doesn't help the city's image."

License plates and pictures decorate the walls of the two-room exhibit, which also features a 1926 car that was driven on the highway.

The museum is housed in the city's historic train station -- a renovated architectural gem of brick and wood named "Casa del Desierto," or house of the desert.

Businessman Ved Shandil, who has lived in Barstow for more than a decade, believes the investment in Route 66 heritage can do for the city what it did for his business.

He owns a 21-room motel that was built in 1922. Five years ago, he said, he considered selling it or knocking it down because he couldn't pay his bills.

"But my wife said no. So instead we changed the name to Route 66 Motel," he said. "Now people stop all the time. They come from all over the world to drive Route 66 and they want to stay in the Route 66 Motel. If they want to stay in the motel, why wouldn't they want to visit the city and see the museum?"