Owner of US ghost town with population of zero fights to save it after paying $425k for boarded-up & abandoned buildings

A MAN spent nearly half a million to bring a ghost town back to its former glory.

The business district in Amboy, California has a post office, a historic restaurant motel, and a Route 66 tourist shop with a population of a whopping zero people.

Kyle Okura, 31, inherited all of the businesses and assets inside the town following his father's death.

The town is popular with tourists who take pictures with the Route 66 emblem painted on the paved road.

A 50-foot neon sign for Roy's Motel & Café is also a major tourist attraction for the only operational business in the town.

"It's in the middle of nowhere in the desert, but you see a multitude of different types of people in Amboy," Okura told the Daily Mail.

"That's what's so amazing. You hear stories from all different parts of the world."

The town originated as a mining camp in 1858 and has long been a stop for passersby.

It gradually grew into a town with an Atlantic and Pacific Railroad station and was named Amboy, however, the town is full of empty buildings and businesses that don't cater to any residents.

Roy's is the only sign of life in the town with snacks, drinks, and souvenirs along with a small, full-service gas station that only houses three pumps.

Okura relit the iconic Roy's sign in November 2019 in an event that attracted 500 people and at least 50 planes to Amboy's airstrip.

"I remember when my father purchased Amboy, everyone wrote it off as a bad decision," Okura wrote on social media.

"Fourteen years of struggling to restore the once famous boomtown and we've finally started to turn this thing around."

Roy Crowl opened Roy's to serve travelers driving on what used to be the main east-west highway in the US.

With the help of his son, Buster Burris, the convenience store grew into a café and then a motel.

But as the years passed, the traffic from Route 66 was routed away in favor of Interstate 40, which was built in the early 1970s about 10 miles north.

The loss of motorists essentially killed all the businesses in Amboy, taking Roy's along with it.

Okura's father, Albert, bought the abandoned town nearly 20 years ago from Burris' widow for $425,000 on the condition that he restore the town to what it used to be.

Albert began by reopening Roy's gas station and maintaining the 1950's aesthetic.

Okura, who was 12 when his father bought the town, was confused about the decision to buy it.

"All I think was, 'Man, this place is so far away. Where are we even going?'"

However, it wasn't out of his father's character as by that point in time, he had already bought the San Bernardino storefront on Route 66, which used to be the site of the original McDonald's.

Albert believed Amboy would be good publicity for his chain of chicken restaurants, Juan Pollo, however, his son wasn't convinced.

It took time for Okura to take an active role in restoring Amboy and it ultimately became a way for him to get closer to his father, who had worked nearly every day for 40 years.

Albert was present for the relighting of Roy's neon sign in 2019 but last year, he went to the hospital believing he had a stomach bug, which turned out to be sepsis.

Four days later, he died at the age of 71.

"I thought I was going to be working with him forever," said Okura, adding that Albert used to bring his own father to work until just a month before his 100th birthday.

"I thought we would be the same, we'd be working together until he was 100."

Okura hopes to have a part of the National Trails Highway, the official name for Route 66, be named the Albert Okura Memorial Highway in his father's honor.

He also plans to hang plaques around Amboy that detail his father's quest to restore the town.

Okura is currently juggling revitalizing Amboy and managing Juan Pollo - he became the president of the restaurant chain after his father's death.

When Amboy came along, he kept telling myself, 'It is my destiny.' So I do believe that now, moving forward, it’s part of my destiny to honor that.

Kyle Okura

But he thankfully has a small, dedicated team that shares his dream of putting Amboy back on the map.

The town was featured in Olivia Rodrigo's music documentary, Driving Home 2 U, where the star filmed a portion of the project in Amboy.

In 2023, Cindy Crawford did a photo shoot in the town sitting in a $7 million 1953 Ferrari Spider with Roy's in the background.

"One of the best memories I have is being out here at sunset with Cindy Crawford," said Roy's manager, Ken Large, who is on Okura's dream team.

"I'm old. That might be as good as it gets for me."

Okura hopes that much of the work will be done by 2026, the 100th anniversary of Route 66, which will hopefully draw a lot of tourism and jumpstart businesses.

"When Amboy came along, he kept telling myself, 'It is my destiny,'" Okura said of his father.

"So I do believe that now, moving forward, it’s part of my destiny to honor that."