Ludlow, California

01A Water Stop Named for a Railroad Man

Ludlow took its name from William B. Ludlow, a master car repairer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, an unglamorous tribute fitting for a town whose first purpose was to keep steam locomotives running across one of the driest stretches of the American Southwest. When the Atlantic and Pacific built west through the Mojave in the early 1880s, every locomotive needed water, and water in this country had to be hauled in by tank car from Newberry Springs, more than thirty miles to the west. The little stop that grew up around the tanks was barely a town at first, just section housing, a depot, and the men who kept the rails clear of drifting sand.

That changed when prospectors found gold and copper in the Bullion Mountains to the south. The Bagdad-Chase Mine, opened in the late 1890s, became one of the richest gold producers in San Bernardino County, and Ludlow was the closest point on the main line. In 1903 the Ludlow and Southern Railway began running south from Ludlow to the Bagdad-Chase mine and the mining camp of Rochester, turning the dusty siding into a genuine commercial center.

02Mother Preston and the Borax Years

Ludlow's second boom arrived with borax. From 1906 until 1940, the town served as the southern terminus of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, operated by Francis Marion "Borax" Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company. T&T trains rolled south out of Death Valley and Beatty, Nevada, hauling borate ore down to Ludlow, where it was transferred to Santa Fe cars bound for refineries on the coast. For roughly three decades, three separate railroads converged at this single Mojave junction.

The most colorful figure of the borax era was a woman the locals called Mother Preston, who reportedly ran the town's mercantile, saloon, and rooming house and held a near-monopoly on commerce until she sold out and, according to one widely repeated account, retired to France. Around 1908 the Ludlow Mercantile Company building went up, later operated by the Murphy Brothers; its sun-bleached concrete shell is still the most photographed ruin in town. At its peak, Ludlow supported a school, a church, hotels, cafes, pool halls, bars, a bathhouse, and more than 500 residents, an improbable population for a place where every drop of water still had to be imported.

03What Happened to Ludlow, California?

The slow unwinding began with the mines. The Bagdad-Chase played out, the Ludlow and Southern stopped running in 1916, and the Tonopah and Tidewater shut down for good in 1940 after Pacific Coast Borax moved its operations elsewhere. Without ore to transfer, the railroad town had no reason to exist on railroad terms.

What saved Ludlow, briefly, was pavement. The National Old Trails Road, designated U.S. Route 66 in 1926, ran straight through town, and Ludlow reinvented itself as a service stop for Dust Bowl migrants, wartime travelers, and postwar tourists chasing the Mother Road. The streamline-moderne Ludlow Cafe, the Desert Inn Cafe and Hotel run by the Lee Yim family from 1914 into the 1960s, and a string of gas stations kept the lights on through the late 1960s. Then Interstate 40 was completed and bypassed the original townsite by roughly a mile. The handful of remaining businesses migrated north to the new freeway exit, and the old Route 66 strip was left to the desert.

04Can You Visit Ludlow Today?

Yes, and easily. Ludlow sits directly on Interstate 40 about 50 miles east of Barstow, and a small modern community of a gas station, motel, and cafe still operates at the freeway exit. The historic ghost town lies a short drive south along the old Route 66 alignment. Photographers come for the Ludlow Mercantile ruins, the collapsed garages, and the rusting hulks of mid-century cars left where they died. The site is on open desert land and free to visit, though there are no formal interpretive signs, no fees, and no shade. Summer temperatures routinely exceed 110 degrees, and cell service is unreliable.

The town's cinematic emptiness has drawn film crews for decades; Ludlow has appeared as a backdrop in productions ranging from independent dramas to the 2015 film Sky, alongside other Mojave stand-ins like Bombay Beach and Hinkley.

05What Remains of Ludlow Today

The concrete walls of the Ludlow Mercantile, foundations of the old cafes, scattered ties from the long-vanished Tonopah and Tidewater grade, and the unmistakable line of tamarisks marking historic Route 66 are the most visible relics. A small cemetery north of the freeway holds graves from the railroad and mining decades. The modern truck stop at the I-40 exit keeps a flicker of commerce alive, but the original Ludlow, the one built by William Ludlow's water tanks and Mother Preston's saloon, belongs now to the wind, the creosote, and the slow geometry of desert decay.