The Barstow Album Page

I found this album page in Barstow, a small town in the high Mojave Desert of California. The mystery is how it came to be in Barstow. There are no trees or babbling brooks in the desert. (See my hiking and cycling blog, www.selfpropelled-wjy.blogspot.com for snapshots of the Mojave.) Barstow was on the old National Trails Highway, latter designated Route 66#, the most important road from the mid-west to Santa Monica, the Pacific Ocean and Southern California. From it's days as a dirt road, through the roaring twenties, the dust bowl era of the great depression, to the boom years of World War 2, and the post war era, the majority of those making the move to Los Angeles went through Barstow. This page could have been from an album once owned by a migrant from Arkansas or Missouri who took a job at the Santa Fe Railroad yards in Barstow. Or maybe someone from the high desert had to get out of the heat for awhile and they vacationed where there were green trees and cool shade.