Barstow Harvey House, Casa del Desierto

The Casa del Desierto, Spanish for House of the Desert, is the grandest building in Barstow and one of the finest surviving Harvey Houses in the American West. Built in nineteen eleven by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway after a fire destroyed its predecessor, the station blended Spanish Renaissance arches, red brick, and Moorish towers in a style that felt extravagant against the Mojave backdrop. In its peak years travelers dined in white-tablecloth restaurants staffed by Fred Harvey's famous Harvey Girls, and Barstow was a genuine crossroads of the continent. The depot closed in nineteen seventy-three, survived a nineteen ninety-two earthquake, and reopened after a restoration costing more than eight million dollars as an Amtrak station and home to two railroad museums.