Casa del Desierto

A Spanish mission-revival masterpiece built by the Harvey Company in 1911 — the most impressive building in the Mojave

Address 681 N First Ave, Barstow, CA

Casa del Desierto — House of the Desert — is a 1911 Spanish mission-revival building that served as both a Harvey House hotel and the Barstow railroad depot. Fred Harvey's company built a chain of hotels and restaurants along the Santa Fe Railway to feed cross-country passengers, and this one in Barstow was among the grandest. The architecture is striking: arched colonnades, terracotta tile, and a courtyard that manages to feel gracious despite sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

The building was restored in the 1990s after years of decline and now houses the Western America Railroad Museum, the Route 66 Mother Road Museum, and Barstow Area's chamber of commerce. The railroad museum inside is worth a look — exhibits on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which was the economic backbone of Barstow from the 1880s onward. The building itself, however, is the main attraction: few Mojave Desert towns have anything approaching its architectural ambition.

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A story
The Harvey Houses were a chain of railroad restaurants and hotels that transformed dining in the American West. Fred Harvey made a deal with the Santa Fe Railway in 1876 to run eating houses along the line, and his female staff — the famous Harvey Girls — brought a standard of service that was genuinely remarkable in frontier towns. When the interstate highways and the automobile killed railroad travel, most Harvey Houses were demolished; Casa del Desierto survived because the city bought it.