Barstow Harvey House, California

What is Barstow Harvey House?

Casa del Desierto, Spanish for House of the Desert, is a long building of arches and covered walkways beside the tracks, built in a mix of Spanish and Classical revival styles with a Moorish touch. Besides the Amtrak station, it houses city offices, the local visitor center run by the chamber of commerce, and two museums.

The Route 66 Mother Road Museum fills one wing with photographs and artifacts on Route 66 and the Mojave Desert towns along it. The Western America Railroad Museum tells the railroad side. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a California Historical Landmark.

History of Barstow Harvey House

Barstow's first depot, hotel and restaurant, a wooden building from 1885, burned in 1908. The Santa Fe replaced it with this complex, finished in 1911 and run by the Fred Harvey Company, whose Harvey Houses fed and lodged rail passengers across the Southwest. The design is often credited to Mary Colter, though some historians name Santa Fe architect Francis W. Wilson.

As rail travel faded, the hotel and restaurant closed and the building fell empty, and the railroad planned to tear it down. Local residents objected, the City of Barstow took it over around 1990, and after restoration it was rededicated in 1999. The Route 66 Mother Road Museum opened in a wing in 2000, closed in June 2024 after flood damage, and reopened under new private operators on March 22, 2025.

Visiting Barstow Harvey House: tips

Plan about an hour for both museums and a walk along the arcades. The museum keeps short hours that have changed since the reopening, so check before you go. The Desert Discovery Center is about 1 mile away and the Mojave River Valley Museum about 1.2 miles. Heading east, Needles near the Arizona line has another former Harvey House, El Garces, from 1908.