The reminder of the heyday of both Roy’s and Route 66 proved short-lived, as within minutes the drivers slid behind their steering wheels and headed off, leaving behind the faded diner, rows of disused white motel units and an empty car park.

Their disappearance echoed the fate of the great highway that stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica on the Californian coast. It crossed eight states and carried hundreds of thousands of depression-era migrants west in search of work and a new start after dust storms devastated farmland in the Midwest.

The road was built between 1926 and the late 1930s and went on to secure a unique place in popular culture and the arts. Its fame was boosted by the song Route 66, written by Bob Troup and first recorded in 1946 by Nat King Cole. Many cover versions followed, perhaps most notably those by Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones. The road features in the animated movies Cars and Cars 2, and there was a 1960s TV series called Route 66.

The highway is often associated with the beat novelist Jack Kerouac, a favourite of mine when I was a teenager, though in fact there are only two passing references to it in his classic work On The Road. John Steinbeck, on the other hand, contributed greatly to the legend. He named Route 66 the “mother road” in The Grapes of Wrath, writing: “66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas…” Those refugees who fled to California included the parents of country music legend Merle Haggard.

Once packed with traffic that supported motels, restaurants, stores and gas stations along the way, Route 66 was eventually sidelined by the interstate highway network. Most of the businesses were abandoned after the road was decommissioned in 1985, their buildings left to decay under the burning desert sun.

Those that survive in greatly reduced circumstances, such as Roy’s, are popular with enthusiasts’ clubs – a group of bikers stopped off after the Challengers left. But other than that, it’s been a long time since anyone got their kicks around there.

Parts of the route have been preserved as a tourist byway. I drove along a section from Barstow, a nondescript military town and transport hub halfway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, to Roy’s in the tiny community of Amboy in the Mojave desert. Route 66 passes along Barstow’s Main Street – the highway is known as the “Main Street of America” – and its name is emblazoned on many motels and shops. The town gets a few mentions in The Grapes of Wrath.

Stretches of Interstate 40, which replaced this part of the old road, ran alongside it, as did a railway line carrying goods trains that seem to go on forever. One other place was open – the Bagdad Café, as seen in the 1987 movie of the same name.

I stopped off to gaze at the Amboy Crater, an extinct volcano, before pulling in at Roy’s. After visiting the coffee shop, I wandered through the abandoned, dusty motel reception, dining room and bedrooms.

America is such a relatively new country that I always find it surprising to come across discarded relics from its short history – an abandoned silver mining town, perhaps, or these once-thriving businesses along the empty old highway.

Verdict: Great drive for fans of U.S. history and Americana if you’re in the area.

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