Oasis Palms

The Lost Pearl of the Mojave Desert

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – The Flamingo Motel

May 14, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Across the tracks from Cliffhanger’s is the Flamingo Motel. Built in the late 50s on the site of the original Oasis Palms Hotel and Hot Springs Resort, the Flamingo Motel offered the best views of downtown Oasis Palms.

The pool was heated in the winter and was fed from the natural hot spring next to the train station. The water was piped in through the caves and re-heated with a coal-fired furnace below the pool. Room #3 on the first floor next to the pool had a trap door in the bathroom that led to a staircase to the furnace and Barco Distillery in the cave below.

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Cliffhanger’s Trailer Park

May 14, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Just behind Lefty’s turn left off Barco road onto Vista Drive which takes you up the hill to Cliff Hanger’s Trailer Park, the Flamingo Motel, and the Graceland Wedding Chapel.

At the top of the hill and across the tracks, you will find Cliff Hanger’s Trailer Park. This is where the last mayor of Oasis Palms and great-grandson of the town founder, Floyd Smith lived before moving to Slab City, CA. During the late 60s and early 70s, Floyd hosted many famous guests at his trailer under the stars.

The moon rising over Cliff Hangers…

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Atomic Jackalope

May 5, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Very little is known about the small business called the Atomic Jackalope. Located at the west entrance of town on Barco Road next to Lefty’s service station and just outside the tunnels that lead into the Barco mine, originally the Atomic Jackalope was just a trailer with broken down VW bus and a hand-painted sign that said “Space Station”. The Proprietor known as “Uncle Bill” would scour the desert for asteroids and other mystic rocks and offer them for sale in his front yard.

Uncle Bill was said to be a colorful character who would tell visitors about other real and mythic residents of Oasis Palms. When asked why he moved to Oasis Palms, Bill told people he was headed to Joshua Tree for a Mystic Convergence but this is where his bus broke down.

Later to improve the entrance into town, a custom sign was gifted to Uncle Bill by the Oasis Palms Chamber of Commerce. The sign was painted by Hanna Barberra’s famous illustrator Kenneth Muse. The Rocket motif was designed to take advantage of the public’s fascination with space travel and the Jackalope was based on an early version of Muse’s Richochete Rabbit. Together they became the Atomic Jackalope.

Uncle Bill’s VW bus never moved again desert flowers grew up all around it and became a fixture in his front yard. Occasional visitors and friends would use the bus as a place to camp. They open the roof and take a space trip under the desert stars.

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Lefty’s Lightning-fast Service

May 4, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Officially named “Lefty’s P-38 Lightning Fast Service”, Lefty’s Garage may be the most famous building in Oasis Palms. Lefty was the great-grandson of Cameron Smith and flew a P-38 Lightning in Africa during WWII. After the war, Lefty returned home and was trying to promote tourism in Oasis Palms so he purchased a decommissioned P-38 and mounted it as a canopy above his gas pumps.

Heavily promoted by billboards on Route 66, Lefty’s P-38 Lightning Fast Service became a mid-century “selfie” spot for tourists. Later artist Larry Grossman immortalized Lefty’s in a popular Lowbrow painting.

Lefty is credited with building the Oasis Palms Scenic Railroad and was a prolific entrepreneur and promoter. When Mobil refused to allow him to become a distributor, he started getting bulk fuel from Texaco delivered on rail cars and Lefty then began supplying fuel to service stations along Route 66. No one was ever sure what brand of gas Lefty was selling, but Lefty always had gas.

There are multiple iconic Oasis Palms stories attributed to Lefty.

  1. Lefty added the mid-town railroad loop (essentially cutting the town in half) just to make it less expensive for him to take delivery of bulk fuel to the back of his service station.
  2. Lefty stopped the building permits of the A&W as a year-round structure to prevent competition with his wife’s Hotrod Diner.
  3. Lefty blew up the Barco Distillery still and subsequently burned the Oasis Palms Resort Hotel to the ground to make room for the track to be laid to access his Oasis Palms Scenic Railroad loop over Oasis Palms.
  4. Lefty got into a fight with the owner of the Flamingo Motel and erected the huge Mobilgas neon sign on his roof simply as spite to block the Flamingo guests’ view of the plateau and downtown.

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Midtown Restaurants

April 6, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

In Midtown on the east side of Main Street across were the A&W Drive-in and the Hotrod Diner.  The diner was built by the Smith family in the 30s shortly after the theater was completed. The A&W was the last building built in Oasis Palms. It was built in the 1950s on a postage stamp-sized lot with limited access off Oasis Road.

To get to town from the East automobile traffic came in on Oasis Road. When leaving town Oasis Road took visitors out of town under the railroad bridge, out past the Vulcan Gold Mine site, and then finally reconnected with Route 66 in Danby California. This was the last remaining buildable spot when an entrepreneur from Northern California approached the Smiths asking to build an A&W franchise in Oasis Palms.

To reduce competition for their family-owned diner, the Smith’s issued building permits for an outdoor dining establishment. As an outdoor-only establishment the A&W was only open in the summer after dark as it was too hot to sit on the stools mid-day and in the winter it was only open for a few hours in the middle of the day while the sun was shining as it was too cold to operate after dark. Despite the setbacks, the A&W was popular with both the locals and visitors to town.


The Hotrod Diner was a classic diner converted from a scrapped railroad diner car purchased from the Santa Fe Railroad. Owned by Lefty and Molly Smith, it was originally named Molly’s but was rebranded in the 50s to take advantage of the popularity of the newly emerging California car culture.

The Horod diner was open 24 hours a day 7 days a week and sat at the corner of Main Street and Barco Road. Being caddy-corner to Lefty’s garage and featuring a full bar and liquor license, it was the most likely spot to find Lefty at any given time.

 

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Downtown

March 2, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Across the tracks to the south of the train station and oasis is downtown Oasis Palms. This business district consists of six all-brick buildings most of which were built in the 1880s by Cameron Smith with bricks sourced from Philander Colton of the Mormon Battalion in San Diego.

The buildings on the west side of Main Street in downtown include a Barbershop/Ice Cream Parlor/Pool Hall mixed-use building, the three-story Hotel California in the middle of the block and a Saloon and package store on the corner.

The statue in the town square was of Wilbur Smith. Wilbur was the eldest son of Cameron and Malika who enlisted in the Union Army. Initially Wilbur served in the 1st California Regiment before being transferred to the 71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, where he participated and died heroically in the Battle of Gettysburg.

At the end of the Main Street facing the town square and water fountain is the Oasis Palms Metropolis Theater. The theater was constucted in 1929 and featured a dramatic Beaux-Arts and Art-deco exterior. While the theater was small with only 50 seats, the dramatic facade and exterior lighting created an impressive night-time site to visitors.

The east side of Main Street housed the town water tower, Smith’s Hardware store and the Oasis Market which served triple duty as a market, Post Office and Pharmacy. The Market was the defacto hub of all activity in Oasis Palms.

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – The Oasis

February 3, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Directly south of the Oasis Palms train station is the oasis “discovered” by Capt Cameron Smith in 1840. This ancient oasis was well-known to the local indigenous people for a millennia before Smith arrived. Smith was led to the oasis by a local guide who was a strikingly beautiful California Native American from the Hutto-pah Mojave tribe. This guide Malika, would later become his wife and would co-found the town of Oasis Palms with Smith.

This oasis provided 10,000-year-old virgin water to the town that came directly from the Fenner Aquafir located deep in the ground below Oasis Palms until the spring mysteriously ran dry in the 1980s.

 

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Oasis Palms Virtual Tour – Train Station

January 6, 2024 Stephen Leave a Comment

Whether you arrived to Oasis Palms by train or by automobile the first structure greeting visitors was the Oasis Palms Train Station.  The Oasis Palms train station is one of the older buildings in town. Built in 1898, to serve the Santa Fe Mojave Limited passenger train service it later served the Midnight Limited and the El Capitan.

The Oasis Palms welcome sign on Barco Road was erected in 1945 to promote tourist traffic visiting Oasis Palms from nearby route 66. Tourists were directed from billboards at Amboy and Cadiz to take the 10-minute detour down Barco Road to visit Oasis Palms. The sign was fashioned after the sign was installed at the end of Route 66 at the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles in 1941. In reality, the detour to Oasis Palms was more like a 30-minute drive but most tourists were not disappointed with their visit to the Barco Plataue.

The Oasis Palms train station was later expanded to include a second passenger platform where visitors would arrive on the nightly Santa Fe Midnight Limited trains bringing thirsty visitors from Los Angeles. Years later, after WWII the Santa Fe El Capitan service would stop each day on its way from Los Angeles to Chicago.

 

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Sign, Sign Everywhere a Sign

December 15, 2023 Stephen Leave a Comment

Oasis Palms was just like every other town in mid-century America, advertising clutter was the rule. The next project was to begin decorating the various buildings with the signs that identify the various businesses in Oasis Palms.

The signs were designed in Photoshop based on historic photos (when available). Since the build era is the early 1960s, signs on the older businesses in downtown were weathered more than the signs on the newer businesses up on the hill. The signs were printed on matte finish heavy-weight photo paper and then glued to 1/4″ foam board. The sign edges were then backfilled with lightweight spackle, sanded and painted to match with acrylics. Bamboo skewers and toothpicks were painted and used to act as sign poles.

The Oasis Palms welcome sign is similar to the sign at the base of the Santa Monica Pier. The sign in Santa Monica was unveiled in 1941 and marks the unofficial end of Route 66.

The “Liquor Box” package store was promoted by a sign of Scooters Rye Whisky which had been distilled and bottled in the Oasis Palms caves starting in 1905.

The Oasis Market sign was based on the Balboa Market Sign in Newport Beach, CA the Hardware Store sign was based on the Gardner’s True Value Hardware in Lonepine CA.

 

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Recreating Oasis Palms Downtown Sidewalks

November 20, 2023 Stephen Leave a Comment

The sidewalks in Oasis Palms create a palm tree planter down the center of Main Street and include the building foundations for the two downtown blocks. To make the blocks, first I made paper templates cutting all the odd shapes and piecing them together so I could make one piece that could be dropped in or removed as a single unit. Eventually, I will attach the buildings and lighting, and have a single power plugin per block. This will allow me to remove each block as a single piece and detail the scenes and buildings when they are off the layout.

The construction of the sidewalks began with 1/4″ birch plywood (I wanted to use 1/4″ tempered hardboard but I was unable to source any locally.) After cutting the blocks to shape with a saber saw, they were skim-coated with a layer of drywall compound. This gives the wood a more concrete-like texture and builds up the thickness of the plywood to a true 1/4 thickness.

After the drywall compound dried, the sidewalk patterns were scored with a finishing nail. I put a 1/8″ edge around the outside and added cross joints every 1.5″ at six scale feet. When scoring the joints some of the joint compound will naturally break off. These imperfections add realism to the look of the concrete.

For finishing, the blocks were first sprayed with gray Rustoleum Primer. Then I added 20% paint/water black wash, This was applied over the entire surface with a sponge brush making sure to fill every joint line and the excess was wiped off with a paper towel. Since concrete begins to yellow as it ages, next I sprayed a dusting of Rustoleum Khaki Camouflage paint. Dusting was done by spraying parallel to the surface and simply allowing the spray paint to drop on the surface. This was applied lightly with some areas heavier than others.

The next step was to give the concrete a broom finish. Using a brass wire brush, I lightly scratched the entire surface in one direction. This lightened the entire surface and allowed the base coat of gray to show through.

Then for the last layer, I very lightly re-dusted the entire surface with three different colors. I used the Rustoleum Primer Gray, Ivory, and flat Brown. This results in small gray, white, and brown dots on the surface.

 

Palm trees and streetlights were added to the center divider and the sidewalks were bolted down using 2″ long #4 screws set into the pink foam. On the underside of the layout, I added small fender washers and a nut to hold the blocks flat in place. Later these sections will be removed and detailed individually with curb painting, parking meters, fire hydrants, and people which will bring the scenes to life.

Plastic palm trees were painted and the fountain in the town square was painted using the same as the concrete technique with a final dry brushing of the white chalk paint to give it a more marble-like appearance.

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