What is your favorite offbeat spot in California? Drawn to the historical and remote, I long have fancied Kelso Depot.
Ninety-five miles southwest of Las Vegas, the depot has a solitudinous sparkle as its Spanish Mission Revival-style structure comes into view for motorists traversing Mojave National Preserve on Kelbaker Road. Palm and other handsome trees, along with green grass, mostly surround a two-story building that has been respectfully restored to its original 1924 appearance and contains the preserve’s visitors center and museum.
Over the years I have stopped by a half-dozen times, always curious how renovations are going and eager to stand outside in the desert to soak up the calm. Kelso Depot for me has represented, above all, a wonderful contrast to metropolitan life.
Kelso came about when the Union Pacific Railroad line from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City was completed in 1905. The track between Kelso and Cima, 18 miles to the northeast, rises 2,000 feet as it meanders past the Providence, N.Y. and Ivanpah mountains. Such a steep grade (2.2 percent) required supplemental locomotives to be attached at Kelso. The depot there housed railroad workers, and its cafeteria fed them, as well as train passengers, for decades.
Nearly 2,000 people lived in Kelso in the years around World War II, but by 1959 train technology had eliminated the need for extra locomotives, and in 1985 the building was shuttered. Concerned citizens rallied to prevent a razing by persuading Union Pacific to sell Kelso Depot to the federal government in 1992 (price: $1).
Today, visitors encounter an uncluttered and pristine interior that harks back to the site’s bustling prime. The horseshoe lunch counter, surrounded by a couple dozen swiveling wooden chairs, is a showpiece. A video that airs upon demand in the small theater is an up-to-date, top-notch production. The exhibits upstairs, including refurnished rooms and railroad history displays, are concise and engaging. In the basement, there’s a scale model of the building, landscape and tracks.
My feelings about the place pretty much echoed what Huell Howser, the late folksy host of PBS’ travelogue “California Gold,” said at the depot’s grand reopening in 2005: “This depot here in Kelso, this oasis, this place of tranquility and rest and wonder.”
I asked Mojave National Park tour guide Phillip Gomez what he thought.
“I don’t know if it’s so different from any place else, really, any other visitors center that you have spent some time in,” Gomez said.
